June 2002

ACM TO BALLOT ON AOC PAY OFFER

A further round of talks on pay took place at the National Joint Forum (NJF) meeting held in London on Tuesday 11th June.  The Association of Colleges raised their offer to an increase of 2.3% on pay and allowances, including London weighting.  The offer also included a flat rate increase of £400 for employees earning less than £11,000 per annum.  The employers made clear that this was their final offer.
 
The staff side, comprising ACM, ATL, NATFHE, UNISON, GMB and TGWU, refused to accept the offer and will be meeting to discuss what further joint action should be taken.  ACM will be balloting members, with a recommendation to reject the offer. Members will be consulted on what further action should be taken. A voting slip and prepaid envelope are enclosed with this newsletter. Please make sure that you vote.
 
NATFHE have rejected the offer and will be taking industrial action short of a strike, with further strike action during the Labour Party conference in October possible.  ATL are also likely to reject the offer.  The three support staff unions will be consulting their members with a recommendation to reject the offer.
 
Peter Pendle, ACM’s General Secretary, said “The increased offer, whilst moving in the right direction, is still disappointing.  The Association understands how difficult it will be for colleges to afford a pay increase for employees this year against the background of the current funding difficulties.  Nevertheless, the employers had promised to move towards narrowing the gap in pay between college staff and comparable staff in schools.  This offer clearly fails to do this and makes the matter even worse.  ACM’s National Council has decided that any offer less than 3.5% would be totally unacceptable and will be balloting members on whether to accept the offer, with a recommendation that it should be rejected. Unless the Government provide additional funding for pay the prospects of a conflict free autumn term do not look good.”
Guidelines for ACM members to follow should NATFHE proceed with industrial action have been posted on the web site www.acm.uk.com.

ACM TAKES THE LEAD ON BASIC SKILLS

The Association’s Basic Skills Project is underway, having successfully recruited 21 colleges. Those 21 colleges will participate in a project to deliver basic skills training to their own employees who lack language and numeracy skills. The basic skills delivery will take place in the Autumn term, and following that the project will use those experiences to describe models of good practice. The overall project outcomes will be disseminated early in the New Year. Organisations rep-resented on the project steering group include AoC, TUC, Natfhe, Unison, Basic Skills Strategy Unit as well as Heads of Corporate Services from two of the participating colleges. The first of three steering group meetings was very supportive and made a number of proposals helpful to the success of the project. The training for the project managers in each college takes place on June 25th: The overall aim of that training will be to explore the role of the college qua employer with regard to meeting the basic skill needs of its staff. Colleges where security, cleaning, catering etc are contracted out present special issues (the college is not the employer and cannot authorise time off for study) but we hope to describe how colleges dealt with this in our final report.

Phase one of the project (set up, steering group meeting 1, and training for lead managers) is almost concluded. Phase two begins in August with the identification of learners and their needs, and the development of the right programme for each learner. ACM news will include further updates in the Autumn. The participating colleges are: Exeter, Southwark, Preston, City and Islington, Carshalton, Newham CFE, Bournemouth and Poole, Bradford, Plymouth, Wirral, Bury, Somerset, West Nottinghamshire, Loughborough, Wigan and Leigh, Chichester, Blackpool and The Fylde, Cornwall College Group, Fareham, Isle of Wight, RNIB Redhill.