College staff in Scotland have been given a “final” offer of a £5,000 pay rise over three years in a long-running pay row.
College Employers Scotland (CES) engaged in new talks with the EIS Further Education Lecturers Association (EIS-Fela), along with the support staff unions Unite, Unison, and GMB.
This move follows a recent two-week rolling strike by EIS-Fela members.
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CES urges the unions to consider a comprehensive £5,000 pay increase spread across the academic years 2022/23, 2023/24, and 2024/25.
This proposal is a notable increase from CES’s previous offer of £3,500 over two years.
It is calculated to yield an average pay rise of 11.5 percent.
CES said those at the lower end of the national pay scale will get a remarkable 14.2 percent rise.
College support staff could see an increase of nearly 16 percent,.
Those earning less than £25,000 might even see a 21.5 percent increase.
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CES has committed to preventing compulsory redundancies directly linked to the new three-year pay proposal.
Gavin Donoghue, director of CES, said: “This is a very fair pay offer for college staff and would provide significant pay rises, especially now inflation has fallen to 4.6% and is forecast to decline further.
“These proposed pay rises have also been offered against a backdrop of serious financial stress and challenge for colleges, including an 8.5% real-terms reduction in Scottish Government funding since 2021/22.”
