Staff at five colleges to strike over pay

Staff at Redcar and Cleveland College are among those due to walk out

Staff at five colleges are going on strike in a dispute over pay.

Teaching and support staff at Teesside's Education Training Collective will walk out for four days, starting from today, the University and College Union (UCU) said.

The group runs Bede Sixth Form College and The Skills Academy in Billingham, Stockton Riverside College and NETA Training Group, and Redcar and Cleveland College.

The Education Training Collective (ETC) said the strike action was "unfortunate" but only a "small minority" of staff were involved.

ETC said it had to maintain cash reserves to remain financially sustainable and there was "nowhere else to go to meet the demands of the union members as the funds simply do not exist".

The union said its members had rejected a pay offer of 3% for 2022-23, with an additional 1% from May 2023.

"Despite already taking nine days of strike action, ETC is still trying to force our members to accept poverty pay," the union's general secretary Jo Grady said.

"Due to the employer’s actions, there is now a clear breakdown in industrial relations, and it is refusing to constructively engage in the collective bargaining process to resolve the dispute."

Zero-hour contract

ETC said pay had increased by 10.5% over two years and "wellbeing days" had been added to staff benefits.

Improvements to lecturer and course leader pay scales meant an additional 3% increase for some lecturing staff, it added.

"Pay scales at the ETC compare favourably to those of other colleges in our region," a spokesperson said.

The UCU said strikes would also take place on Wednesday, Thursday and 18 September, meaning lessons would be disrupted during the first two weeks of the new school year.

Earlier this year, union members at the five colleges passed a vote of no confidence in group principal Grant Glendinning.

The union also said it objected to the college group advertising a health and social care lecturer role on a zero-hour contract.