by Richie Venton
It’s one of the most astounding and complete victories in years, and one of the most rapid too. Members of the EIS Further Education Lecturers’ Association (EIS FELA) have scored outright success on their demands within hours of the first day of a militant plan of strike action.
Over 4,000 union members at Scotland’s FE colleges – themselves overwhelmingly populated by working class students, of all ages – went on strike last Thursday 17th March, and planned to escalate this action with a total of 32 days of strikes, involving two and three days a week.
Their demands were simple and entirely justified: equal pay, equal terms and conditions, and national bargaining.
A Long Struggle
For nearly two decades this has been a festering issue, with massive disparities between the pay (up to £10,000 a year) and conditions of work for staff doing exactly the same job, on the same grades, but in different colleges or in different towns and cities.
Salt was poured into this open sore with years of cuts; job losses through the college mergers and centralisation initiated by the SNP government; inflammatory levels of ‘golden handshakes’ to college principals and senior managers – followed by a derisory 1% pay offer for 2015/6.
For years, the union argued for restoration of national bargaining to help overcome this outrageous lottery of salaries and conditions. More recently, a leadership of EIS FELA heavily populated by socialists with long experience in the union mapped out a strategy of action that factored in the forthcoming Scottish elections, putting the Scottish Government on the spot.
Labour critics of the SNP government haven’t got a leg to stand on. Under the Labour-LibDem Coalition of 1999-2003, union demands for national bargaining were haughtily ignored. Then the SNP took office and made promises to meet this demand, but nearly 13 years later had still failed to fulfil the hopes they’d fueled.
In recent times, EIS FELA were told there was no more money in the pot, hence the 1% pay offer. The SNP’s centralisation did nothing to improve education; didn’t actually save any money after the huge handouts to top college bosses drained resources; and cut off access to Further Education places for 144,000 students. The staff had had enough!
Solid Strike Hits Hard
The first strike day was rock solid, with large numbers on the picket lines; both experienced union activists and complete novices to such action. About 300 strikers travelled to lobby the Scottish parliament that afternoon, visibly rattling Nicola Sturgeon herself with the passion and determination they displayed. Just weeks before the May elections, Nicola at last told some lobbyists that “I’m going to sort this out once and for all.”
By 3 o’clock on the Saturday morning, after nearly 13 hours of negotiations, the strikers had won a stunning victory. All of a sudden, Colleges Scotland – and their paymasters, the Scottish Government – abandoned their previous claims of being penniless, unable to improve the 1% pay offer, let alone harmonize pay upwards across Scotland.
First, bosses in the three colleges in Glasgow – who had stubbornly refused to abide by national bargaining agreements – caved in, after the impact of the first strike day, and more importantly, the looming spectre of further strikes.
Resounding Equal Pay Victory
The latter also concentrated the minds of Colleges Scotland bosses wonderfully – and the minds too of an SNP government seeking a popular mandate mere weeks from now.
They conceded full harmonization of terms and conditions across Scotland’s FE colleges by this autumn.
They agreed a phased harmonization of pay by April 2019 – equal pay three years hence – which will mean a whopping 33% pay rise for the lowest paid lecturers.
Contrary to their pre-strike inflexibility on nothing more than a 1% pay rise, they granted an additional £100 rise to all staff now, and a further £450 next year.
And to further sweeten the icing on the cake, lecturers who courageously went on strike last week will lose no pay for doing so – and indeed will be paid extra for taking additional classes to help students catch up with any work disrupted by the strike!
A Boost to All Workers
This is a resounding victory, and a huge boost to the fighting morale not only of the EIS FELA membership, but also the wider EIS membership – currently in conflict over backbreaking workload and education cuts – and indeed other trade unionists.
In celebrating this victory, EIS FELA members and fellow-trade unionists shouldn’t lose sight of a few profoundly simple lessons. The invaluable role of trade unions; try to imagine the futility of fighting for equal pay without a union! The powerful weapon of militant strike action, shaped according to the readiness of each workforce to take that action. The importance of having principled trade union activists – fully accountable to their wider membership, rooted in the workplaces themselves – at the heart of developing strategies for struggle, and indeed conducting negotiations alongside full-time union officials. And the all-important issue of timing, of applying relentless demands and pressure on politicians anxious to please and appease voters; the fact that those in government at Scottish level are far less remote than the Westminster dictatorship, and far more susceptible to the demands of trade unionists in action.
Never Forget!
Nor should workers lose sight of the record of these various political forces.
Labour has no grounds to crow at the climbdown by Nicola Sturgeon’s government, nor for claiming any credit for gaining equal pay and national bargaining, given their appalling track record in government on the issue.
The SNP, however, cannot claim any glory either, since it took decisive strike action to compel them to implement promises they’d reneged on for several years.
The SSP, in contrast, not only played at least a modest part in this victory – both through members in EIS FELA and in our solidarity with the strike – but in fact fought for precisely this outcome several years ago, as far back as the days of the Labour-LibDem Coalition at Holyrood, when we supplemented our efforts in the union, on the streets and in the parliament with production of a special FE edition of the SSP’s Scottish Socialist Voice.
Workers’ in Action CAN Win!
Victories for trade unionists are all too rare these days, which adds to the profound importance of not only celebrating and saluting the victory scored by EIS FELA strikers and their leadership, but also of broadcasting that success story throughout workplaces, where workers often feel cowed into thinking “there’s nothing we can do about it”. Far from it! Workers taking action can win!
A detailed story of how EIS-FELA structured their collective action was published in the Scottish Socialist Voice – “How to win an industrial dispute in three not so easy lessons“