#Honourthecontract

We had a wee demonstration at lunchtime across all four campuses today.

When we were on strike a couple of months back it was to avoid a detriment to terms as a result of our merger. One of teh key aspects for the union was that we kept our existing teaching commitments, which pretty much amount to a weekly norm of 22 teaching hours with a maximum in exceptional circumstances such as cover for sick leave of 24 hours. The rest of our time is spent preparing, marking, writing lesson plans, teaching materials, assessments and feedback, interviewing planning, training to keep our skills up, meeting with employers, universities and other stakeholders and myriad other small tasks which help us take in students and hopefully give them the best experience we can at college and the best opportunities we can on leaving college. I don't know a single colleage who manages to complete all their work within their contracted hours so like the bulk of the workforce throughout the UK we do a lot of our workload in our personal time. I don't know any colleagues who complain about this, it is an accepted part of the job, however we were all rightly upset that some of the planned changes involved moving to annualised hours potentially meaning far more teaching hours in a week Given that the other parts of the job couldn't realistically be delayed this could mean unsustainable workloads.

The fact that management eventually agreed to a harmonisation deal which meant no major detriment to staff was the sole reason we ended the strike. We didn't resort to a strike lightly and it certainly wasn't about money. The fact the harmonisation document agreed by our regional chair cited a weekly norm of 22 hours and a maximum of 24 hours was a major part of this. Unfortunately it appears that management have chosen to misinterpret this and a document was circulated to middle managers stating we could be timetabled up to 30 hours a week in class next year.

Today was the start of a series of actions designed to try and make our employer honour teh deal which took us off strike. The idea is for short protests and other actions which will hopefully prove effective without having to resort to a strike again. In addition we are trying to highlight the recent announcement of 70 planned redundancies at the college due to cuts to yet more cuts to the FE sector by the Scottish Government.

The event was well supported by students, staff from both teaching and support staff and local councillors Cammy Day and Vicki Redpath.

Let's hope this can all be resolved without having to go down the strike route again as no one wants that.

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