Strike action is not something any worker takes lightly and our union’s recent dispute has been no exception. The majority of further education lecturers enter the sector as a second career after working in industry. We are highly qualified professionals who want to teach. So why strike?

The timing of our strike was triggered by management’s failure to implement the March 2016 agreement, specifically the pay harmonisation element due on 1 April.

The dispute’s origins go back to the early 1990s and the “incorporation” of colleges as quasi-independent bodies with business-dominated boards of management. Colleges became the playthings of principals who vastly inflated their own pay packets, while staff drifted further apart on pay and key terms and conditions.

The SNP government’s reforms changed the sector beyond recognition. Mergers have seen the creation of supercolleges, the loss of thousands of student places and skyrocketing levels of work-related stress.

‘A small crumb of comfort’

The reforms came with the promise of a return to national bargaining - a small crumb of comfort to a sector already at breaking point.

Re-establishing national bargaining, however, has been painfully slow. It took nearly a year to persuade colleges to even sign the national Recognition and Procedure Agreement, with the three Glasgow colleges - a quarter of the sector - only joining after industrial action. The March 2016 agreement was hugely significant, setting out the process for achieving equal pay by 2019 and - separately - the harmonisation of terms and conditions.

We knew that delivering this agreement would not be easy and the deadlines were ambitious. Anger grew across the sector as it became clear that the management side sought not to achieve harmonisation, but to increase class contact time, cut prep time, attack holidays and undermine existing terms and conditions - and that they had no intention of honouring the agreed deal.

The BBC described the subsequent EIS strike action as the most significant education dispute in Scotland since the 1980s. This was national action, solidly supported not only in large central-belt colleges, but by the University of the Highlands and Islands partners, and across the country. The government’s apparent inability to compel management to honour the deal served only to make lecturers angrier, with picket lines doubling in size and students organising supporting rallies.

This dispute was avoidable and the repercussions of management (in)action will be felt for many years to come. After further government intervention, the colleges confirmed payment of the first equal-pay instalment this month, but other elements of the deal, including class contact time and annual leave, are still being finalised. It is clear, though, that national bargaining is here to stay - and colleges are no longer the personal fiefdoms of their principals.

Pam Currie is vice-president of EIS-Fela (Further Education Lecturers’ Association) and a national negotiator. She teaches maths and social science at Glasgow Kelvin College