Attacks on Sick Pay Rights in Further Education

The FE
employers organisation, the Association of Colleges (AoC) has announced that it
is withdrawing from national agreements where it gives advice to FE colleges on
sick pay agreements. This is another step in attacking term and conditions of
FE staff that began almost 20 years ago

In 1993
Further Education colleges in England and Wales were effectively privatised
under the guise of “Incorporation”. Local Authority ownership and control of FE
was wiped away at a stroke. Any buildings and land occupied by the FE colleges
became the property of the new corporations and not a penny was paid. Direct
responsibility for colleges was now in the hands of unelected Boards of
Governors with local community interests being exercised through appointed
individuals.

Democratic
accountability and control were abolished. The change was pushed through by the
Tory government with two aims in mind – remove democratic control from mainly
labour councils and reduce the costs of FE. The change also signalled a
wholesale attack on the wages, terms and conditions of FE staff. Working hours
were lengthened with many staff being forced to sign new contracts that
included up to 25 hours per week in front of classes. The new corporation
employers, the same people but under a different name, never stopped to ask
what quality of education you could get with staff teaching for 25 hours per
week and having to spend time marking, preparing and administering their
courses.

All rights
that had been won through decades of struggle were now up for grabs. Holiday
entitlement was reduced, hours on site were increased, and sickness and
maternity benefits were eroded. However, all attacks did not occur at once. A
salami tactic was introduced where over a period of time rights were gradually
changed or eliminated. FE was to be the model for reducing the costs of post-16
education and once the model had been created, the results were to be analysed
and then rolled out in the compulsory education sector, primary and secondary
schools. Schools are now facing what FE staff have faced for almost two
decades.

Over the past
almost 20 years nationally set pay and conditions have been a joke in FE. Each
year FE unions negotiate nationally with the employers’ organisation, the
Association of Colleges (AoC). However, any agreement that is reached is not
binding on member colleges who can opt out for financial reasons. For example,
a 14-point pay scale in FE was reduced to 8 points in a 2003 national agreement
to bring progression up the scale into line with teachers in schools. This
academic year, however, FE teachers at City College Coventry have been taking
industrial action short of a strike to try and get college management to
implement an agreement signed nationally 9 years ago! This example has been
repeated up and down the land. In effect, therefore, the AoC could only
recommend certain guidelines for FE colleges to follow but there was no power
to force FE colleges to follow national guidelines.

Today, however,
December 18th, it has been announced that the AoC is now withdrawing
from even issuing guidelines to FE colleges in relation to sickness leave. When
colleges were incorporated, they inherited term and conditions that had been
negotiated with local authorities, including sickness leave. These have
gradually been eroded but in cases of serious illness there remained in many FE
colleges the right to have six months on full pay and six months on half pay. I
benefitted from this when I had a heart attack on New Year’s Eve 2002 and had
stenting surgery in May 2003. It took me a long time to recover so I was
grateful that I could still feed my family and pay the mortgage while I was
ill. All of this that I enjoyed was because generations of fellow trade union
activists had fought and won decent conditions.

As in all
other public sectors, all that has been won is under attack. As the joint union
statement says in response to the AoC decision to withdraw from the national
joint agreement on guidance for sickness leave in FE colleges in England,

“This vital
agreement sets out the minimum entitlements to paid contractual sick leave,
that the AoC ‘recommends’ colleges implement for their staff locally. It
is an agreement that has been adopted by the overwhelming majority of colleges
throughout England.”

It further
states that section 3 of the national agreement, “calls on colleges to pay
contractual sick pay from day one of absence and for a maximum entitlement of 6
months full and 6 months half pay after 5 years of service -to protect the
seriously ill. This level of entitlement is the standard minimum found
across public services.”

The AoC has
stated that it is prepared to talk about a new national agreement but it is
obvious that this means a worsening of terms and conditions. The joint unions –
UCU, Unite, GMB, Unison, ATL, Amie – have rightly condemned these moves of the
AoC. They correctly point out that they come at a time when “when the health
and wellbeing of staff is already being badly affected by the cuts. Many
members are being forced to take on additional unpaid responsibilities and work
longer hours.”

They also
state that at no time has the AoC, “presented credible evidence of a problem
with sick leave in the sector”. Cutting sick pay too would be counterproductive
as, “staff who are unwell will be forced to come into work when ill. They
could infect other staff which would drive up overall sickness levels in the
workplace, hitting productivity and leading to longer term and more serious
levels of sickness, ultimately driving up costs. Further cuts in sick pay
would also mean that hardworking staff who fall seriously ill, sometimes with
life threatening conditions such as cancer, could be forced into poverty. This
is no way to treat sick people who have given years of dedicated service to
their college.

Cuts in sick
pay will also have a greater impact on women and disabled employees.
Women who have caring responsibilities often have more short term illnesses as
a result of their children’s illnesses. Pregnant women often require more
sickness leave and some disabled employees may need to have more sickness leave
related to their disability”.

These moves
of the AoC will be fought and “the unions will resist any attempt by colleges
to use the AoC’s decision as a justification to try and cut sick pay
locally. Where any college attempts such a move we will campaign together
and are prepared to take coordinated industrial action”.

The joint
unions have issued some excellent advice to local trade union representatives when
it says that, “Firstly, whilst the AoC decision is extremely unwelcome it
changes nothing in your college. The AoC in withdrawing from the national
agreement has not called on colleges to cut sick pay locally. In
addition, in the majority of colleges the right to sick pay will be
incorporated into employment contracts.

In
their letter to the unions even the AoC has stated that:

“ … where a college has adopted the
April 2000 joint agreement as a local collective agreement, the arrangements
for paid sick leave will have become incorporated into individual employee’s
contracts of employment, and thus cannot be unilaterally changed without
collective consultation and agreement to any proposed variation”.
However,
clearly the decision to withdraw from the national agreement may be taken as a
signal by some colleges to attack sick pay. We therefore need to be ready
to defend members’ entitlements.
What you
should do next
Union reps
should immediately take the following steps:
1
         Check if the right to sick pay
is contained in your local employment contracts.
2
         Speak to the other unions
locally about the AoC decision to withdraw from the national agreement and put
in place initial plans to defend sick pay in your college if necessary.
3
Contact your regional office immediately if you get any hint that your college
is looking to cut sick pay.
Finally in
the next week few weeks we will be producing a joint union campaign guide and
checklist to help reps deal with any attempt by their employer to cut sick pay.”

A campaign
will therefore be organised to resist cuts in sick pay entitlement. However, as
the joint-TU statement recognises, “clearly the decision to withdraw from the
national agreement may be taken as a signal by some colleges to attack sick
pay”.

What is
important, however, is that this campaign to defend sick pay is not seen in
isolation from the attacks on wages, terms and conditions that are affecting
workers both in the public and private sectors of the economy. Employers try to
set workers in these two sectors against each other. For example, they abolish
final salary pension schemes in the private sector and then use this as an
excuse to reduce public sector pension schemes on the basis of fairness and
parity.

Given the
crisis in capitalism the Coalition is hell bent on driving down public sector
costs and provision in order to appease the spivs and speculators in the bond
markets. If Britain loses its triple-AAA status, it is possible that the yield
or interest rate that the government has to pay bond holders for buying
government bonds will increase, thereby increasing government debt even
further. This crisis of this economic system means that pension rights, wages,
jobs, and now sickness benefits must be sacrificed on the altar of profit and exploitation,
the twin pillars of capitalism.

So what
should be done? The joint-TU advice is above. Can more be done? Yes!

Firstly, within
the FE colleges the information about the AoC intentions must be circulated to
all trade union members immediately When colleges resume in the New Year, members’
meetings, both of each trade union and jointly, must be called to develop a
plan of action to resist these proposed cuts to sickness pay. In each FE
College a joint trade union committee must be set up in all areas as well as at
a college level. No trade unionist should be left isolated as this is the basis
for weakness. There should also be a recruitment campaign to build union
membership and density.

Secondly,
college unions must link up with fellow trade unionists in Adult and Community
Education, as well as Higher Education, as all sectors of post-16 education are
under attack and therefore joint campaigns must be developed.

Thirdly,
across each local authority there are trade unions – such as Unison, Unite and
GMB – as well as the teaching unions of NUT and NASUWT, which are also trying
to defend their members from these attacks. FE college unions must form town
and/or city wide trade union action committees so that no sector of education
can be played off against another. Local Trade Union Councils can play a
pivotal role here.

Fourthly,
the demand must be raised by FE trade unions for FE colleges to revert back to
local authority control where there is at least some element of democratic
accountability. However, all local authorities are facing huge cuts to their
budgets and are cutting service provision and jobs. That is why the final point
is crucial.

Finally, the cuts issue are a political issue. The crisis of capitalism
is driving the agenda. All trade unions should campaign for the decision of the
September 2012 TUC Congress to be put into effect. This decision, moved by the
FBU and approved by Congress, called for a trade union enquiry into the banking
crisis, in other words open the books, and for the banking and financial sector
to be taken into public ownership under democratic control. Unless we as
working people control the wealth that we create, we will always be faced with
cut after cuts as we are made to pay for a crisis we did not cause.