TEACHERS’ union EIS warned yesterday that colleges in Scotland could face further strike action by lecturers due to management’s failure to enact a national pay deal agreed with bosses almost a year ago.

The EIS-FELA (Further Education Lecturers’ Association) declared the formal dispute after talks broke down at last week’s national joint negotiating committee (NJNC) meeting, which was scheduled to agree the implementation of the pay agreement.

EIS general secretary Larry Flanagan said his union was “extremely disappointed” that members had been forced into a formal dispute with management over broken promises.He warned that EIS “fully expects all the promises made to further education lecturers at that time to be kept.”

The national pay agreement was reached last March just ahead of the Scottish Parliament elections, after a period of successful strikes by college lecturers across Scotland.

EIS-FELA president John Kelly said trade union negotiators had entered the talks in good faith but were met with “obfuscation from college management” at the NJNC meeting.

He accused management of seeking to “move the goalposts on several key elements that had previously been proposed.”

He warned that EIS-FELA would not accept any backtracking from management on any element of the pay deal.

Mr Kelly said: “We took industrial action before to achieve this pay agreement, and we are fully prepared to take industrial action again, if necessary, to defend the agreement and to ensure it is delivered — as promised, and in full.”

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