Welcome to SEJ Digital
New session, different challenges ahead
In recent years, the issue of pay has seldom been far from atop the trade union agenda. The last major EIS pay campaign for teachers and associated professionals, the Pay Attention campaign, led to a prolonged dispute and the first national strike action by Scotland’s teachers in four decades.
In Scotland’s college sector, pay disputes have become regular events, with EIS-FELA having required to stage frequent campaigns of industrial action in order to extract acceptable pay offers from college principals.
This year’s teachers’ pay claim has been settled unusually quickly. Not quickly enough to actually be on time – thank the employers’ dithering for that – but far more quickly than has been the case in recent years. A component of the previous pay agreement was the movement of the settlement date to August the 1st, which did provide more time and space for a negotiated agreement to be reached.
The final deal that was offered – 4.27% for the year, undifferentiated across all grades – is above the current rate of inflation, and marks an important first step towards restoring teachers’ pay to the equivalent of pre-austerity levels.
When the offer went to ballot, 95% of EIS members who voted agreed with the recommendation of the Salaries Committee that the offer should be accepted. This clearly confirms that the EIS and its members were in agreement over the merits of the offer, and were content to accept the deal to provide some welcome pay stability for the year ahead.
If only things had been so straightforward in the Further Education sector. While the teachers’ deal was reached without requiring a dispute or any form of industrial action, college employers forced EIS-FELA members into a lengthy dispute and a prolonged programme of industrial action before a final, fair and acceptable pay offer was put onto the table.
The dispute also saw the deployment of the worst anti-trade union tactics seen in this country since the Thatcher era. At times, college principals seemed more interested in fanning the flames of the industrial action and punishing lecturers than they were in reaching a resolution to the dispute in the interests of students and staff alike.
The decision by college principals to resort to “deeming” – withholding the pay of lecturers engaged in action short of strike – was reprehensible and should never be acceptable in any valid trade dispute. Thankfully, the principals have now had their knuckles rapped and are compelled to repay all such deductions as a key element of the deal reached by EIS-FELA.
Not everything in the garden is rosy on pay, however, as EIS-ULA members and colleagues in sister unions representing Higher Education lecturers have yet to receive a pay settlement for this year. Negotiations on pay in HE remain ongoing at a national (UK) level, with little progress toward an acceptable offer for lecturers.
Despite the ongoing lack of a pay settlement in HE, the picture on pay is generally calmer then in recent years. Many other issues ahead remain to be tackled, with the focus of the EIS main body remaining firmly on the wide-ranging Stand Up for Quality Education campaign and the continuing need to deliver improvements on its three key issues of tackling workload, addressing challenging pupil behaviour, and securing enhanced provision for pupils with additional support needs.
As ever, the EIS and its members will work collegiately to ensure that these issues are addressed. Scottish education continues to face numerous challenges, many of them linked to an inadequacy of funding and resources, and the EIS will continue to do all that it can to ensure that these issues are addressed at both local and national level.
