Further Education Pay Deal Agreed

UNISON Scotland’s FE Sector members accepted this “full and final” pay offer in our consultation ballot which ended on 18th January 2016.

In November 2015 UNISON members across all Scottish Further Education Colleges resoundingly rejected the ‘final’ offer to emerge from the first ever round of  Scottish pay negotiations and members signalled their desire to proceed to an industrial ballot.

As a consequence of that UNISON membership pressure, two further meetings of the National Joint Negotiating Committee (NJNC) were scheduled and this improved offer was made by the Employers;

• The Living Wage from 1 April 2015 ( with a process to move to full accreditation for all 26 colleges by December 2016)
• A consolidated financial element from 1 April 2015 which awards £300 flat rate to all those earning under £30k. This improves the offer for those earning £20 to £30 k
• 1% for the minority of Support Staff who earn in excess of £30k
• An unconsolidated 2015 pay rise of the same value to those on local pay protection
• Two days additional ‘unconsolidated’ leave for all for 2015 only
• A minimum of 27 days annual leave from 1 April 2015
• Standardisation of a 35 hour week by 1 April 2016
• A commitment to look at flat rate cash settlements for 2016.

FE member’s meetings are being held around Scotland, including Dumfries and Galloway College where it was explained to members that the offer isn’t everything we were looking for but the Employers have moved on a number of key negotiating objectives and have produced a revised package which provides some benefit to all our members, in particular the lowest paid. It is a good basis to move forward on for the next round of pay talks which will be submitted in the next few weeks.

There is still a lot of work to be done, in particular with the establishment of a short life working group to develop a workforce modernisation programme which will include a national set of terms and conditions, national job evaluation scheme and national  pay and grading scales.