Welcome to SEJ Digital
New Session, but same old story at City of Glasgow College
In this, the first issue of the SEJ in this academic session, we explore some of the key issues facing Scottish education. Some, like the Curriculum Improvement Cycle and the Employment Rights Act, are relatively new developments.
Others, such as the blight of poor management in the college sector leading to prolonged dispute and industrial action, are depressingly familiar.
In the case of City of Glasgow College, the EIS has been here many times before. An oppressive and overly aggressive management culture within the college has, once again, inflamed a relatively simply issue over health and safety into a long-running dispute and a sustained programme of industrial action.
For more than six months, lecturers in the Welding and Fabrication department have been taking strike action as they seek improved health and safety protections for themselves and their students.
Welding fumes and residue are known to be carcinogenic, and lecturers simply want the risk of exposure to be lowered to as low a level as practicable, as a means to protect their health and the health of students – many of whom are young people, some of school age.
The college, which has already had its knuckles firmly rapped by the Health and Safety Executive over welding protections, says that it has now complied with the law. But doing the bare minimum is not sufficient, in the view of the EIS branch, to reduce the risk to health to as low a level as practicable.
In other Scottish colleges teaching welding, as well as in industry, the provision of Respiratory Protective Equipment (RPE) is a commonly-used means of offering additional protection to those undertaking welding. Yet, City of Glasgow College continues to refuse to provide this simple, effective and relatively inexpensive protection to its lecturers and students.
This has led to the bizarre situation where lecturers and some students are operating welding equipment at City of Glasgow college without RPE, while apprentices coming into the college are equipped with RPE – provided by their private sector employers – to offer additional health and safety protection.
And it is not a question of cost. The college has readily admitted that it has the funds available to allow it to purchase the requested RPE. It has simply chosen not to do so.
As the EIS and others have highlighted, the college found around £14,000 to send the Principal and two other senior executives to New York Tartan Week last year. This cost included flights at over £1250 per head, £4000 on accommodation at the Hyatt Grand Central Hotel, and £700 on a limousine ride across New York for the Principal and his colleagues.
By comparison, a set of RPE can be obtained for around £500.
The overly-aggressive and managerialist response from the college to the dispute, and its treatment of the staff and union Reps concerned, has further inflamed the situation and led, before the summer, to a college-wide dispute being declared.
The EIS continues to do all that it can to support members in the college, and to bring the dispute to a satisfactory end. Advertisements highlighting the dispute continue to run in the press, as well as in outdoor and mobile advertising spaces close to the college.
A joint letter to the First Minister was sent by the EIS and the STUC, urging the Scottish Government to intervene to find a resolution to the dispute at City of Glasgow College, a public body in receipt of millions in taxpayer-funded support. At the time of writing, no response has yet been received to this letter.
It is clear that the current management of City of Glasgow College does not intend to resolve this dispute, unless forced to do so. The EIS is continuing to do its part to deliver that resolution, but it is now well past time for the Scottish Government to step in, in the best interests of staff and students, and compel City of Glasgow College to agree a resolution to this dispute.
