Staff at Barnsley College are the latest to reject a derisory pay rise, turning down the offer of 2% in a landslide rejection.
The 5th of May marked the start of the strike ballot for UCU members at the South Yorkshire college.
This comes after 97% of the faculty said they would strike if their offer was rejected.
Barnsley College is one of three Yorkshire establishments to reject what’s been described as unacceptable pay rises this year.
“We want to say that striking is a last resort,” said David Hayes, 45, a member of University of Sheffield Law school, a faculty which rejected a pay increase last year.
“We have been fighting on several different disputes really: Pensions and Pay Deterioration but also gender race and disability discrimination. There’s also the issue of casualisation as well as over workload and having enough time to do our job. It’s insulting.”
Members say they are fighting for the “Four Freedoms”. This refers to the four places of improvement that UCU members are wishing to change: Pay, Equality, Casualisation, Workload.
Mr Hayes said: “We are not really delivering the quality of education we want to. A lot of the focus is on the people doing the striking as they are the ‘agents of destruction’ but it’s always in the context of dispute and it’s always a last resort.
“We need to ask what the other side can do to get us back to negotiations. We want to get back to providing high quality education.”
Figures show that some teachers are facing up to cuts of £7,000 due to lack of subsidisation.
After the “insulting” offers to Barnsley College, UCU has decided to continue striking into early June with further dates to be confirmed.
If wages are not subsidised as inflation fluctuates, then it leaves employees receiving less pay. In this case, the gap between inflation and pay has left UCU members almost £7,000 less than they would have 10 years ago.