London strikers face the sack

BRITAIN'S longest running further education dispute took a turn for the worse this week as managers issued an ultimatum to 160 striking lecturers telling them to return to work or be sacked.

Dorothy Jones, principal of London's Southwark College, told lecturers, who have been on strike for nine weeks, that unless they return to work by today they will be dismissed.

Mrs Jones said that the college had unsuccessfully offered a number of concessions to lecturers represented by their local Natfhe branch. But she said that the time had now come to put students first.

Mrs Jones said: "This is not a decision we have taken lightly. We are not a management that wants to take aggressive and intimidatory action. But we have been forced into this situation by a branch which is misguided."

The situation exploded last week when lecturers voted overwhelmingly to continue their strike. Nearly three-quarters of the 156 lecturers balloted, who represent just over 40 per cent of the total lecturing staff, voted to reject revised college proposals.

College managers had already succeeded in forcing the striking lecturers to hand over some 140 GCSE English exam papers and other work which had been withheld as part of the dispute. They had threatened to take the union to the High Court. Much of the coursework has yet to be returned.

The deadlock centred on a college decision to sack lecturer Chris Ryan. Mr Ryan had been offered a new managerial post, with more pay, as part of a college restructuring, but he refused to take it. The union asked for a new teaching post to be created for Mr Ryan but the college, which has been hit hard by funding cuts, said that this was financially impossible.

Because of the impasse over Mr Ryan many of the other reasons for the dispute remained unresolved. Among them was the college's intention to work towards using more lecturers supplied through a commercial supply agency.

The union sent in a national negotiating team last week but, despite offering to accept a one-year pilot scheme involving agency lecturers, it failed to reach agreement on safeguards for the part-time lecturers and on Mr Ryan. The union therefore refused to recommend the college's revised offer and the ballot was held.

Earlier this week Natfhe spokeswoman Paula Lanning said: "We are not making any comment at the moment other than that we have approached the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service who are examining some possible points of negotiation."

Managers and Natfhe were in negotiation as The THES went to press.

* Natfhe is on a collision course with employers in Northern Ireland. The Department for Education in Northern Ireland and the Education and Library Boards are refusing to offer a pay rise for further education lecturers from September. They are also refusing to guarantee lecturers jobs for two years after incorporation. The union says it will ballot for industrial action in September unless employers meet their demands.