As we continue our special series on Scotland’s colleges, education writer James McEnaney visits an EIS-FELA picket line for a first-hand insight into their long-running pay dispute.

The Springburn campus of Glasgow Kelvin College doesn’t sit on anything like a main road, so passing traffic is extremely limited, but many of the drivers who are rolling past past signal their support for striking lecturers with a toot of the car horn and a wave (or, in one case, a raised fist) from the driver’s seat.

The picket line outside the college building this morning is well-attended, featuring dozens of lecturers, countless placards and signs, a guitar, and an obligatory (but always much appreciated) canine companion. By this stage in their industrial dispute, which has now rolled on for years, the people here are all well-used to this sort of environment.

One of those on strike today is Colm Breathnach, the Assistant Branch Secretary for the local EIS-FELA group.

“Our action is the only thing that stands between the students and disaster,” he tells me, framing the cuts and funding gaps crippling the sector as not just a threat to lecturers’ wages, but also to the opportunities available to people in communities like Springburn.

The SNP and the Greens, he adds, “came to power on a promise that they would look after the most vulnerable, for whom this sector is so important – but they have let us down dramatically.”

But the impact on staff is also, obviously, high on his list of priorities:

“Less and less staff are doing more and more work, and morale is collapsing – because the college system is collapsing. All we’re asking is that our pay keep up with the rate of inflation and the cost of living.”

The Herald:

Jill Montgomery, the local branch secretary for EIS-FELA, came through the college route herself and says that, without it, she’d never have gone on to have a career in education. In recent years, however, she has watched as the sector has contracted, with staff numbers at this campus alone falling, she says, by about a third since she first arrived.

The obvious consequence of those cuts is reduced capacity, and she complains that they are now in a situation where employers are “screaming out for places” that simply do not exist.

She tells me that lecturers are “fed up with all the rhetoric” that surrounds the college sector and their ongoing dispute, and that what they want to see is action from the government.

Politicians, not college principals, are the primary target for their ire, with special disdain apparently reserved for the colleges minister, Graeme Dey. According to Montgomery, he is typically referred to as “the invisible man”, while others tell me that they have “no faith” in him and that he is a “non-entity”. At one point, when asked for their feelings about the minister, a lecturer simply bursts out laughing.

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Others speak on condition of anonymity, worried about how their employment might react to seeing their name attached to critical comments.

One shows me comparisons between the pay offer they have received and those made to other public sector workers such as teachers or police officers. In each case, they argue, lecturers clearly come off worse. A second calculation shows the real-terms value of their salaries – which have not been increased since 2021 – having dropped by around 20%.

Another points out that the action is not solely driven by a fight for a pay rise – they are also fighting to protect the college sector and, with it, the students it serves.

“Reducing opportunities for young people – that’s why I’m striking,” she says. “It’s a class argument and an equalities issue. I work with people facing multiple barriers and if there isn’t a college for them to attend than there isn’t going to be that ‘pathway out of poverty’ that people talk about.”

The Herald:

Ryan Donachie, a current student who had come down to support the picket line, makes a similar argument. He tells me that colleges are “predominantly for students that have no other access to education,” a group in which he includes himself.

“I wouldn’t have been able to access education if it wasn’t for colleges,” he tells me. “I think it’s really important that as students we’re seen to actually be on the picket lines. To be there and actually be seen to stand by our lecturing staff.”

In response to questions about lecturers' comments on Further and Higher Education Minister Graeme Dey, a Scottish Government spokesperson said:

“The Scottish Government will continue to engage with both management and unions, as they work to reach a settlement which is fair and affordable.  It is for however for the college unions and employers to negotiate pay, terms and conditions, not the Government.

“The Further Education Minister is leading a programme of comprehensive post-school education reform designed to strengthen our college sector, and has engaged with staff, college leadership teams and students across the length and breadth of Scotland.”