FURY and frustration were the mixed reactions of Further Education lecturers to the latest insulting pay offer from the Association of Colleges. With teachers, nurses and teaching staff. many other public sector workers notching up rises in excess of 3%, the principals have offered a pitiful 1.5% to lecturers - who are already well below school teaching pay With starting salaries as low sixth form colleges. as £16,000, and average salaries of just under €23,000 agers determined to balance compared with over £25,000 the books regardless of the for classroom teachers, it is cost to staff and students, the becoming increasingly difficult lecturers' union NATFHE must for FE colleges to recruit brace itself for more solid and sustained action than the token To make matters worse, a protests it has staged so far if it growing cash squeeze is forcing is to secure a decent settlea wave of cuts in curriculum ment. subjects and redundancies in a _ In Oxford, CFE bosses number of colleges, which facing a £l m-plus deficit have receive only two thirds of the sacked over 30 lecturers - but funding per student available to plan to appoint an extra THREE vice principals in a But with hard-faced man- management revamp. tionists, etc): and since the protection applied solely to "From classroom assistants workers, meals workers home helps, UNISON's London members provide the services which are the very fabric of a decent society.
"It is high time they were rewarded and poverty pay was removed from local government in London."
If the employers do not return to the negotiating table, a further two days action are planned 13/14th June. Jane Hutt, who has promised to redefine domestics