Good enough for Glasgow, good enough for us.

So today was the first day of a lecturers strike for Edinburgh College. It's not an action we take lightly and it's not about money. It's about a post-merger harmonisation deal which will see lecturers on detrimental terms which could result in 35 face to face class contact hours in a week. This may not sound like a lot, but on our current terms of 22 - 24 hours contact time a week we already work well into our personal time to allow for planning, preparation, marking, feedback, references, both for UCAS and employment, interviewing, staff development and upskilling, team meetings and planning for things like study visits, work placements and live projects. Not to mention guidance which shouldn't be part of our role but often is.

On a 35 hour face to face week lecturers would be going into class woefully under-prepared, exhausted and seriously stressed, so not only would such a deal be of detriment to us, ultimately it would be of detriment to our students. I know it is a time of austerity and everyone must tighten their belts and I have no problem with that, in the last five or six years I have had one pay rise of 1% so in real terms I am paid significantly less in terms of cost of living than when I started, but I'm not complaining about that. This strike is about one thing for me and one thing only, maintaining the quality of education for my current and future students. And the education we provide is quality, subsequent HMIE reports have praised the standard of education, and watching out students win national and international competitions where they are competing against, for the most part, final year university students has re-enforced that fact.

I'm immensely proud of the work myself and my colleagues carry out, I just wish our management were as they seem to have very little respect for the standards we set.

Coming back to austerity measures I'm sure management would argue that they need to make cuts, yet we have far bigger cash reserves than the merged Glasgow college and Henry McLeish, their regional chair was able to offer his staff a deal which meant no detriment to terms. Management claim that the new terms allow for flexibility to cover classes in the instance of absence, however our existing contracts already allow for this flexibility and it was a system which always worked until a large number of redundancies were made as part of the merger.

Still today was a heartening start, lots of support for our picket lines at the various campuses around Edinburgh. Then a big turnout of staff, students and MSPs for our lobby of the Scottish parliament this afternoon. This is James and Raph from the Student Union pledging their solidarity and support. In addition to them we had Sarah Boyack from the Labour party speaking, and Iain Gray and Neil Findlay from her party were out in support. Also Alison Johnstone from the Green party addressed the rally too. It was a little disappointing that neither the Minister for Education and Lifelong learning or any of his representatives came out to hear what we had to say, as we had a lot to say to them.

If you'd like more info have a look at either the twitter feed or the blog, and once you've read it please consider signing and sharing our petition.

Sorry for posting an essay, but clearly it's an issue I feel very strongly about.