Jeremy Corbyn has offered his support to lecturers at Edinburgh College who face pay deductions as part of an ongoing industrial dispute.
As part of a long-running dispute over pay, members of the EIS-FELA union are engaged in action short of a strike, including not inputting results into college systems.
The dispute has been ongoing since 2021, with no pay rise agreed between college employers and the union.
EIS-FELA has announced that new strike dates will take place this month after a re-ballot of its members renewed its mandate.
Read More:
-
Scotland must increase investment in education or pay a 'very high price'
-
College lecturers renew industrial action as union warns strikes could follow
-
Lecturers 'stand between the students and disaster' as pay fight goes on
Last week, lecturers at Edinburgh College were told they faced having pay withheld as part of the dispute "unless there is an agreed reason for a resulting delay", a process known as 'deeming'.
Following a talk with Neil Findlay, the former Labour MSP, at the Edinburgh Fringe, Mr Corbyn offered his support to the lecturers.
The former Labour leader said: "I just want to send my solidarity to the lecturers, what they are doing is fighting for decent pay and conditions.
"Decent pay and conditions and proper funding of further and higher education means a better experience for students, means better achievements of our students, and in the end a much better society.
"Short-changing our teachers, short-changing our lecturers, short-changing our support staff, damages the life chances of all of our young people.
"So stick at it, and win."
EIS Branch Secretary Dan Holland said: "By choosing to punish staff for participating in Action Short of a Strike and deduct all their salary, this has now escalated the matter locally which will only serve to harm industrial relations.
"Following a local strike last year which damaged these relations, the local EIS branch has worked extremely hard with local management to repair this trust.
"This unconscionable act of deducting all our salary for refusing to complete less than 1% of our job is effectively locking staff out of coming to work, as the Principal clearly stated that any work carried out would be considered voluntary and go unpaid.
"The local branch implores the Principal to withdraw this punitive approach to evidence her commitment to the agreed cultural reset.”
Edinburgh College has been contacted for comment.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel