Lecturing staff at Scotland’s Rural University College are on strike today, in an industrial action prompted by a long-running dispute over pay and grading.

According to the EIS, Scotland's largest teaching union, further strike days are planned, together with an ongoing programme of action short of strike.

EIS General Secretary Larry Flanagan said: “The fact that this strike action is commencing today demonstrates the strength of feeling amongst EIS members at SRUC. Pay for lecturers at SRUC has fallen significantly behind the norms across both the Further and Higher education sectors, and the pay offer made to our members was also completely inadequate.

"It is time for management at SRUC to stop dragging their feet and commit to paying their lecturers fairly for the vital work that they do.”

The union said that the pay offer made by SRUC management would have resulted in 'sub-inflation' pay awards for the majority of EIS members – and as SRUC staff were already being paid 'significantly less' than lecturers in other institutions, the offer was rejected.

“Lecturers at SRUC are not taking strike action lightly, and have displayed great patience while awaiting a fair pay agreement," said Mr Flanagan. "After many years of dither and delay, SRUC management have – at the eleventh hour – finally come back with an offer to take forward a pay and grading review by Autumn 2023. This ‘offer’ from the employer is far too little and far too late – it is clearly a belated attempt to head off strike action but comes with so many missing elements and unknowns for members that it is essentially meaningless.”
A spokesperson for SRUC said: “We are disappointed by the actions of the EIS leadership. We are committed to a review of pay and grading, which has already started, and we have also made a significant offer to our trade union partners on a pay increase for all employees for 2021/2022. We remain unclear as to what specifically EIS remain in dispute about.  

“We encourage the EIS to re-engage with our agreed internal dispute mechanism, including the ongoing offer of external mediation to resolve any specific concerns they may have. 

“We have always engaged openly and fairly with our trade unions partners and our doors remain open," added the SRUC. "We look forward to working with them to discuss what’s best for employees, students, and the future of SRUC.”  

A recent EIS statutory ballot provided the legal mandate for industrial action – support for action short of strike was extremely strong, coming from 93% of those voting, while support for an actual strike was also high at 86%. Turnout in the ballot was 65%, well above the legal minimum turnout set by the UK government’s trade union law restrictions. As such, the EIS said that it anticipated very strong support for today’s strike action from lecturing staff at SRUC.

Picket lines will be in place at all SRUC campuses this morning (Thursday), and an online rally will be held at 1.15pm, live-streamed on the EIS Facebook page.