COLLEGE workers across Scotland denied a pay rise for three years are set to take part in a fresh wave of strike action.

Lectures across the country, represented by their EIS-FELA union, will take a further nine days of strike action as they seek to ramp up pressure on employers to budge from the “final offer” they rejected in December.

Reacting to the announcement, director of College Employers Scotland (CES) Gavin Donoghue said: “The employers’ offer of a £5,000 consolidated pay rise over three academic years is full and final.”

CES say they can go no further after real-terms cuts to the sector of 8.5 per cent since 2021, and a further £32.7 million being slashed from their budgets by the SNP Scottish government this year.

But the union argues that the offer falls “below current public sector pay policy” and fails to take account of the real-terms cuts amid spiralling inflation since they last had a pay rise of any sort.

A statement issued by the EIS-FELA executive stated that after months of industrial action — through strikes and actions short of strike — they had decided to allow a two-week interval between the ongoing strike wave “as a show of goodwill and to afford an opportunity for continuing discussions in an attempt to reach a resolution.

“EIS-FELA does not accept that its members should be treated any differently to any other public-sector worker and are simply seeking a pay offer which is reflective of their professional role in education and in parity with their colleagues in the rest of the public sector,” it said.

“In the event that no resolution is reached, then beginning on Monday May 20, as an escalation of their current industrial dispute, a further programme of strikes will take place.”