What is the aim of the IOU campaign?
The IOU campaign is the latest phase of the union’s broader campaign to ensure that further education college employers adhere to a national agreement on pay.
In 2004, the union signed a national agreement that produced a new improved pay scale for lecturers.Initially, only around one third of the colleges implemented this new pay deal, leading the union to take widespread industrial action in 2005 to improve this. As a result, the great majority of colleges have implemented, or are in talks to implement, the improved pay scale. But around 60 colleges continue to refuse to do this. Leeds College of Art is one of them.
Our college has refused to put in place better pay for its staff. The college continues to secure LSC funding, but it has made a decision to pay you less than your colleagues at other colleges. The aim of the IOU campaign is to drive our college and the other outstanding colleges towards implementing the same or a comparable improved pay scale for all lecturers.
What happens next?
There will be another one day strike on 29 September in which the following branches will take action: Croydon College, College of North-West London, Greenwich College, Rotherham College, Leeds College of Art and Design, Askham Bryan College and Suffolk New College.
The programme of action will include a month of action in October and November when protests, demonstrative action and recruitment activity will be combined with building a petition to the board of governors of each college and political lobbying. In addition, colleges will be asked to sign up to a new timetable of industrial action and/or action short of a strike.
Ultimately, the campaign will continue for as long as there are branches and members who want fair pay and are prepared to campaign for it. Our ultimate aim is to win complete adherence to the national agreement. That’s ambitious, but already the highly successful record of the IOU campaign shows that campaigning produces results.
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