Ballot gives resounding approval of Edinburgh College’s harmonisation for teaching staff
Teaching staff have voted overwhelmingly to accept Edinburgh College’s offer of harmonisation of terms and conditions and a pay deal worth 3% this year and 4% in 2014-15.
Following merger in October 2012, staff at the college have been on three different sets of terms and conditions. Harmonisation of terms and conditions for support staff was reached last summer through negotiation with Unison. The process with EIS regarding teaching staff took much longer and disappointingly resulted in industrial action in February.
After a series of latterly constructive negotiation meetings, EIS officials and representatives of the Board of Management finalised the terms of a harmonisation proposal for lecturing staff, that EIS branch officials unanimously recommended to their members. Today, the EIS announced the result of its ballot of members, with 90% of the 303 members who voted voting to accept the offer. The results received today show that the offer has been welcomed by teaching staff.
The harmonisation deal gives an annual teaching allocation of 800 hours per member of staff. This equates to approximately 22 teaching hours per week over 36 weeks as originally proposed to EIS. College management agreed to a maximum of 24 hours per week.
Our original pay offer for 2013-14 cost the college 3% of the teaching salary bill, on a par with the deal accepted by Unison last year, and this is what EIS officials recommended teaching staff accept in their ballot. During the negotiations management gave teaching staff further reassurance by extending this to a two-year deal, offering a further 4% of the teaching salary bill in 2014-15.
Mandy Exley, Edinburgh College Principal, said: “Staff across the college are dedicated to our students, working hard to give them the best learning and teaching experience possible and we want to reward them fairly. We are pleased that teaching staff have overwhelmingly accepted our offer on harmonisation of terms and conditions and pay, and trust that this positive ballot result will enable our teaching staff to focus on our students at this crucial time of year.”
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