Staff at Kirklees College in strike action this week over pay and working conditions dispute
Staff at Kirklees College will begin three days of strike action this week amid a dispute over pay and working conditions.
Members of the University and College Union (UCU) will go on strike on Wednesday, January, 14, Thursday, January 15, and Friday, January 16.
Striking staff from across England will also rally at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster from 12pm on Friday, 16 January.
Kirklees College has two main sites in Dewsbury - the Springfield Sixth Form Centre and the Pioneer Higher Skills Centre - and one in Huddersfield.
The UCU, alongside its sister unions NEU, GMB, UNISON and Unite, is calling for a New Deal for FE, including pay parity with schoolteachers, national workload agreements and a binding national bargaining framework.
The UCU says that the employer body, the Association of Colleges (AoC), “recommended a pay uplift of four per cent but colleges do not have to follow it, and many have failed to do so in previous pay rounds”, with the average college teacher earning “£9,000 less than their counterpart in schools.”
The general secretary of the UCU, Jo Grady, said: “Industrial action is last resort for our members, but staff at Kirklees College have been left with no choice. There is still time for management to make a fair offer that helps close the pay gap between school and college teachers.
“Our demands are reasonable, and management needs to look at those that worked to settle their disputes. Employers must now agree to meaningful sectoral bargaining so further education can avoid the cycle of strike ballots and disruption that we have seen over the past few years.”