Created on: 22 Mar 2021
On Friday 19th March, the Annual Conference of the EIS Further Education Lecturer’s Association (EIS-FELA) expressed concern with the news that the Employers Association, Colleges Scotland has not ratified the NJNC Agreement made last week.
The NJNC Agreement, negotiated via the National Joint Negotiating Committee (NJNC), led to EIS-FELA cancelling the national strike day scheduled for earlier this week to give both parties the opportunity of ratifying the NJNC Agreement and to agree an associated NJNC Circular.
Subsequently EIS-FELA agreed to ratify the NJNC Agreement, which (with the associated NJNC Circular) would have resolved the dispute and stopped the programme of strike action. Colleges Scotland, however, failed to do the same.
Speaking today at the online Annual Conference, EIS-FELA President Charlie Montgomery said, “It is our understanding that despite the EIS-FELA Executive ratifying the NJNC agreement, Colleges Scotland failed to follow suit at their meeting yesterday.”
Mr Montgomery continued, “It is also our understanding that Colleges Scotland has directed its negotiators to seek to reopen negotiations on the agreement. However, we do not know, at this stage, despite repeated requests, exactly what the substance of Colleges Scotland’s position now is.”
Mr Montgomery added, “We are obviously extremely disappointed, following a lot of work to reach agreement through negotiations, that this appears to be the position taken by Colleges Scotland. Colleges Scotland’s failure to ratify the NJNC Agreement that its negotiators agreed means that we have no resolution to the dispute. Our programme of strike action will therefore commence on Thursday, March 25th.”