Staff at all six Further Education colleges across Northern Ireland will strike for five days next week and continuously for the next three months in a long-running dispute over pay and working conditions.
UCU said it has been forced to take action after a decade of their members being subject to pay freeze, followed by pay restraint, which has seen lecturer pay awards limited to between 1 % and 2% per year.
NI lecturer wages are several thousands of pounds per annum behind schoolteachers and university lecturers who, are themselves fighting for improvements in their pay. Not only do lecturer salaries compare unfavourably to elsewhere in the education system, but the NI pay rates are beneath what lecturers are paid in Scotland, Wales and many parts of England.
Measured against the retail price index, lecturer pay has declined by over 25% in real terms since 2015. UCU said lecturers cannot be expected to absorb the cost-of-living crisis while money can always be found for the capital builds of campus expansion, and it will not idly standby and allow the pay degradation of NI lecturers to continue.
