Students' sympathy for college strikes is being tested

Over two years, classes have been irregular, relationships with classmates and lecturers have taken months to develop, and course results have not come until Zi is well into their next term.

The backdrop is a decade of dispute that has pitted college lecturers and support staff against their college employers.

The past two years have seen national strikes, local strikes on targeted campuses, result boycotts, and general disruption caused by the culture of combativeness that the situation has created.

Media coverage has focused on the fights between colleges and the EIS-FELA, Unison, Unite, and GMB unions, the calls for the Scottish Government to intervene with more funding, and the accusations from both sides of bad faith.

But the direct, daily impact on students has not been given as much time in the spotlight, in part because the students who need to tell that story are busy struggling to navigate their college careers as best they can.

'I stood on the picket line. Who stands with us?'

In a letter, Zi and their classmates explained to me exactly what they were feeling as students and what obstacles they were facing.

“The situation has become clear that we as students, and by extension our futures, are simply tools that the college and lecturers hold hostage in order to extend their battle.

“Coming off from the strike last year, which lasted from August 2023-December 2023, we were met with a lack of sympathy from lecturers. Lecturers who were frustrated that we hadn't learned anything, nor could remember anything from their very few lessons during the strike.

“Now we are going through it all again, but a lot of students have applied to university and are having their potential futures snatched from them.”

When I met with Zi to discuss their concerns, they repeated two key refrains: first, “I do not begrudge the lecturers, I support the right to strike”, which was always followed by, “But students are running out of time.”

“I’m all for the unions,” Zi said.

“My dad’s a fire service watch commander in Govan. I want to be sympathetic towards them, but if they’re not going to return that energy in the classroom, I don’t know. It was meant to be solidarity, but when we all got back to the classroom it wasn’t like that.”

Zi recalled a specific history assignment last year that required students to cite references using footnotes in the proper style. The problem? Most of the students had never learned about referencing in previous courses.

“This was our first time. No one knew how to do it, right? I remember consoling a lot of my friends over the phone because they just broke down they didn’t know how to do it.”

City of Glasgow College has been the site of many EIS-FELA pickets in recent years. (Image: Colin Mearns)

Despite this, Zi said it felt so often that lecturers weren’t willing to take the time to help students catch up or understand that some fundamentals were missing because they may have only been able to meet for certain courses for a few weeks each term during the strikes.

For Zi, who walked 30 minutes to catch the bus, ride into the city and walk to campus to stand in 8am picket lines with lecturers, it felt like a particular betrayal.

"I stood on the picket lines, but now I wonder who is standing with us.

“The main sentiment among everyone at the moment is that we want to support our lecturers. I mean, we take social sciences, we learn about Marxism and all that, we’re lefty to the core.

“But then, when it comes time to stand in solidarity with the students, the same support isn’t there? I feel like a broken record at the moment.”

Solidarity or selfishness?

Other classmates are feeling the same way. Amy Carroll stated it clearly and concisely, explaining how the amount of time and material students have missed should earn them a refund.

Amy said that, despite initially being understanding about the strike for pay, “now it is a case of negligence, ignorance, and selfishness.”

“The lecturers complain about not being paid enough, but I was unaware that our education revolved around them,” Amy continued.

“I thought that coming to college to get more qualifications and a future degree would work in our favour, even though that’s not the case here.

“The lecturers in the college have had their fair shot at further education and gotten their degrees, so why is it fair that they can disrupt ours?

“It’s not.”

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Amy said that the student loan for last year’s courses now feels like a debt taken on for no reason. Many students are now preparing to move on to university or new programmes, but they are worried they won’t have the qualifications through no fault of their own.

Amy said the college's attempts to facilitate these transitions don’t seem to have the students' best interests at heart.

“It is also felt that the college’s reputation has been held as a higher priority than our education. We as students deserve the education we have worked hard to try and achieve.

“Imagine how it feels to be treated as an afterthought by both lecturers and the college. I am hoping that we can collectively come to a resolution for this situation, and we are treated with the same respect we have given the lecturers.”

Response or rhetoric?

So, what is being done to ease the pressure on students caused by the industrial disputes? When asked, the City of Glasgow College and the lecturers’ union EIS-FELA criticised the state of negotiations.

When asked about students who feel they are being treated as an afterthought by lecturers, and how EIS-FELA and its members have worked to mitigate the impact of strikes and results boycotts on student progression, EIS General Secretary Andrea Bradley said:

“FE college lecturers care deeply about the quality of provision for students, and the long-running campaign to protect Scottish Further Education, quality provision for students and the jobs and pay of staff is a reflection of that.

“Industrial action is always an option of last resort, and one that has been taken in light of the lack of a cost of living pay settlement for Scotland’s college lecturers for the past two years during the worst cost-of-living crisis in living memory.”

EIS General Secretary Andrea Bradley (Image: Alan Richardson)

I also asked EIS-FELA how it has instructed its members to help support students who may have missed critical lessons in previous courses due to strike disruption.

Mrs Bradley continued: “Lecturers don’t want to be on picket lines but in classrooms with their students. 

“The Action Short of Strike, a legitimate form of industrial action, was intended to minimise the number of outright strike days – but some college employers inflamed the dispute by seeking to ‘deem’ lecturers and withhold 100% of pay from lecturers even on non-strike days.”

She concluded that the union “shares the frustration” of students and called on the Scottish Government to work with unions and employers to end industrial action.

Colleges, including City of Glasgow College, where Zi, Amy, and their classmates attend, say they are working closely with university partners to secure student places while they await official results, which have been delayed by another EIS-FELA results boycott.

When asked what the college is doing to secure places for students who have not received their results, a City of Glasgow College spokesperson said the college has formal arrangements with the University of the West of Scotland, Glasgow Caledonian University and Napier University to “minimise disruption” for “the small number of students whose exam results may be delayed.”

The spokesperson said that the college estimates that 92% of results have been entered and that roughly 80% of lecturers continued working as usual throughout the strike periods.

But Zi, Amy and others fall within the “small number of students.”

They can’t bring themselves to trust that those efforts will pay off. With only certain college courses, certain lecturers and certain students’ results held up, they understand that, in reality, major universities would rather fill places with students whose portfolios are already intact.

When presented with the students’ comments and asked how the college is working to mitigate the impact of industrial action on students, the spokesperson said that the dispute is nationwide and “regrettably, EIS-FELA go out on strike every year, which is an approach that ultimately jeopardises college students and damages the reputation of the college sector.”

The majority of the response included a breakdown of college sector pay and terms in Scotland compared to the other home nations, and the most recent nationally-negotiated pay offer which EIS-FELA has not accepted.

The spokesperson added: “Colleges across Scotland are now very experienced in dealing with the consequences of such regular industrial action, and, having dealt with many similar situations over recent years, students are given the opportunity to complete their course and progress to advanced study or directly into employment.

“Matters of pay are negotiated at a national level between College Employers Scotland and EIS-FELA, and we hope the ongoing discussions will resolve this dispute soon”.