COLLEGE students are facing turmoil after lecturers threatened to take industrial action over a one per cent pay rise.
The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), which represents lecturers, said the offer was unacceptable and that a move to strike action was "highly likely".
The union argues staff at some colleges are receiving £7,000 a year less than others doing the same job elsewhere.
The EIS wants all unpromoted lecturers to earn up to £40,386, amounting to an uplift of between 3.3 per cent and 25 per cent across the best and worst-paying colleges.
Larry Flanagan, general secretary of the EIS, said: “Scotland’s college lecturers deserve a fair pay award and it is simply unacceptable for the management side to drag the pay round for almost a year, only to then offer exactly the same rise that was previously rejected.
"It is also extremely disappointing that the final offer reinforces the pay imbalance across the sector. The pay gap is already extremely wide, amounting to almost a £7,000 difference in some cases for lecturers doing the same job in different colleges.
"This is not what lecturers hoped for or expected from a return to national bargaining and the management across the sector must now rethink both their negotiation tactics and their unrealistic pay offer."
However, Shona Struthers, chief executive of Colleges Scotland, said national bargaining has been absent in the college sector for over 20 years and that there were "a number of issues" that required to be addressed.
She said: "Mechanisms have had to be put in place to move from local to national bargaining and then there is the issue of delivering an across-the-board pay increase that is in line with public sector pay policy. There is also the need to address variances in pay around the country.
“The solution proposed by EIS would actually cost the sector over 13 per cent more in wages on average. This is not realistic and definitely not sustainable."
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