The Scottish government has contacted those involved in the national bargaining process for FE to “learn lessons” from this year’s flawed process, Tes Scotland has learned.
It is understood that government officials have written to staff and employer representatives to invite their views on how negotiations were conducted, the data and evidence that was available to support the negotiations, and how affordability had been assessed.
They have also been asked to consider the information that was available to individual colleges on affordability and the implications of potential options, as well as the role and contribution of the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) and the government.
A government spokeswoman confirmed that it was “engaged in discussions with the key parties involved to consider how national bargaining can be improved to the benefit of the sector”. She added: “We appreciate the significant effort and energy invested by all involved in the recent round of negotiations and want to ensure that lessons learned from the latest round can inform improvements to practice in the future.”
The government would not be drawn on whether it would make formal recommendations at the end of the process, but the spokeswoman said the current discussions were intended to “contribute to the continuous improvement of the negotiating process - and positive outcomes from those discussions will be shared with the National Joint Negotiating Committee (NJNC)”.
‘Much work to do’
The return of national bargaining to the Scottish college sector has been marred by controversy and national strike action both by the Further Education Lecturers’ Association (EIS-Fela) and support-staff union Unison (see box, below). EIS general secretary Larry Flanagan stressed that colleges were public bodies and lecturers were public sector employees, with the majority of college budgets provided by public finance through the SFC. “The recent negotiations over the delivery of the March 2016 NJNC agreement demonstrated that national bargaining still faces challenges in the college sector,” he said. “The EIS will continue to engage constructively with colleges, the funding council and the Scottish government to ensure that the promises made to college lecturers regarding national bargaining are delivered.”
Unison Scotland organiser John Gallacher said his union was “pleased to play a full role in an impending review of the new national bargaining arrangements set up for the sector”.He added: “While significant progress on pay rises, terms and substantive conditions like hours of work and holidays has been made for college support staff, there is much work to do. A review is timely.”
The sector had seen “major disputes and industrial action in the last three years”, Mr Gallacher said, and “the processes, structure and conduct of national bargaining need to seek to avoid this disruption in future”. Unison welcomed “the government’s role in seeking to make sure its policy in ‘free’ national collective bargaining works to best effect”.
Mr Gallacher insisted that there was “no direct role for Scottish government at the negotiating table between FE unions and employers”, but added: “To operate as a sector within the public sector, as opposed to individual standalone colleges, appropriate central government intervention - and at times direction - is necessary.”
A spokeswoman for Colleges Scotland Employers’ Association said the bargaining arrangements through the NJNC were still relatively new to the sector, so it was sensible “that we take the time to reflect on and improve those arrangements with all parties involved as we move forward”. The reintroduction of national bargaining to FE after many years was “a significant undertaking”, but the sector was “resolutely committed to implementing it”, she added.
