College employers have reacted with dismay to news that the lecturer’s trade union, the EIS-FELA, has announced a mandate for six more months of strikes and another resulting boycott.

It comes after a formal ballot in which 67% of those who voted - less than a third of all college lecturers - supported further strike action. 

The disruption will begin as soon as next month, with a resulting boycott re-commencing on 5 August, as efforts continue to resolve the long-running pay dispute. 

Gavin Donoghue, Director of College Employers Scotland (CES), the national body for colleges as employers, said: 

“This ballot result means colleges will be facing prolonged disruption for the third time since May 2023. Colleges are flexible and adaptive, and have successfully mitigated the impact of previous strikes and two highly disruptive resulting boycotts. However, they cannot carry on doing this indefinitely. 

“Against a backdrop of unprecedented funding pressures, CES has offered the EIS-FELA a pay award worth an average of around £6,500 over four academic years. The offer includes a £5,000 pay rise over the first three years, which has already been overwhelmingly accepted by all support staff trade unions and is the same amount as the first three years of the EIS-FELA’s own four-year pay claim. 

“If accepted, the four-year offer would keep college lecturers in Scotland as the UK’s best paid, and would also boost the starting salary of a college lecturer to more than £41,000 from September next year. 

“Across the four-year pay period, the average college lecturer would be significantly better off with the employers’ pay offer than if their pay increases matched the Scottish Government’s public sector pay policy.

“Regrettably, the EIS-FELA has not ever formally balloted its members on the full details of this pay offer. Instead, it has chosen to continue asking its members to participate in damaging industrial action and a resulting boycott. 

“The latest vote for more industrial action represents only a minority of the total lecturing workforce at Scotland’s colleges. The result, combined with low strike turnout at the end of the last academic year, indicates most lecturers have little appetite for further disruption and want the dispute to be settled.”