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College lecturers belonging to the NATFHE union are considering striking. The author explains that lecturers have played by the rules set by colleges and the government and were offered a mere 1.5% raise. The union is now considering harsh tactics that will hurt non-salaried workers in the short term but will hopefully make those in power take notice.

Lindsey Noble, principal at Southampton City College, explains that the college's refusal to grant staff a 3.7 percent pay raise is part of an attempt to break even in the next financial year. This refusal has also occurred at about 65 other schools in the United Kingdom. NATFHE and Unison are striking in response.

Maintenance workers at Marquette University voted against joining the International Union of Operating Engineers in an election held Dec. 5. Employees of Marquette's Facilities Services Department voted 37-28 against joining [...]

Issues are presented concerning the industrial action which has been threatened by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers whose members are angry at the growing discrepancy between their pay and that of school teachers.

There is a clear willingness in the UK further education sector to establish a new era of more positive industrial relations. The National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education is keen to work with the Association of Colleges to identify potential for cooperation, consultation and negotiation. The first priority will be to bring about an agreed settlement of the national contracts dispute. Consideration will also be given to issues including single table bargaining for all college staff and a single pay spine for all college staff.

The ongoing strike by lecturers at Southwark College could disrupt exams and assessments, according to students' leader Peter Clauzelma. The dispute concerns a 1.5 million pounds sterling cuts package, which NATFHE the lecturers' union regards as a test case. Other disputes concerns the dismissal of a senior lecturer who refused to take up a new post, and plans by the college to pilot the use of ELS, the controversial lecturers agency.

It was a clandestine mission with a noble purpose. Last week, on a heavily wooded campus in North Toronto, roughly two dozen students rose at 4 a.m., quietly made their [...]

Professors at York University in Toronto put down their pens and held up picket signs last week, as 1,050 full-time faculty and librarians walked off the job, closing down at [...]

New Haven, Connecticut An unusual alliance is disrupting education-as-usual at Yale University. Three unions representing almost 5,000 workers - the service and maintenance workers (Local 35), the clerical and technical [...]

Peter Smith, the general secretary of Association of Teachers and Lecturers in Great Britain (ATL) has smoothly transformed the functioning of the union by making it a strong competitor for becoming Britain's second largest teaching union. He is able to continue recruiting teachers who are in the FE union even if the ATL joins the TUC because the Bridlington Agreement was thrown out. Smith's own experiences made him think seriously about the wastage of talent. Smith, after an 11-year spell at teaching, went into opera production and joined the Assistant Masters Association (AMA). He was responsible for the merger of AMA and the Association of Assistant Mistresses.

New College's change of status from a sixth-form college to a further education college is marred with controversies. New College's teachers union organized picket lines to preserve the school's status. They claimed that the transformation entitles them to a raise in pay since it will extend their teaching hours and burden them with more responsibility. To remedy the situation, education officials agreed to give the striking teachers 500 pounds sterling plus a 2.9% pay increase.

Education minister Tim Boswell and John Akker, the new general secretary of the lecturers' union NAFTHE, are discussing the implementation of new contracts which have led to strikes by colleges. The MANCAT contract signed by the NATFHE was also discussed at these talks. The Education Department plans to study the MANCAT agreement signed by Manchester College of Arts and Technology and NATFHE and another contract signed by Bridgend College.

NATFHE, the union of college lecturers, has been criticised over a boycott call for jobs advertised under new contracts. The principals of South East Essex College of Arts and Technology and the City of Bath College have called the union's action concerning their ads 'vindictive'. NATFHE has not yet approved the new contracts. About 50 tertiary and further education colleges are advertising jobs under new contracts, out of a total of 500 colleges, according to the Colleges Employers Forum.

Adelphi's Faculty Union Wages Media Campaign The Adelphi University (Garden City) Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the faculty union, recently completed a radio advertising campaign aimed [...]