College lecturers today rejected a 2.8% pay offer and announced plans to strike in November.
Natfhe, the organisation that represents staff in colleges, had asked for a 7% increase to start to bring them into line with the earning of schoolteachers. The Association of Colleges, which represents the employers, offered a maximum of 2.8%.
Schoolteachers were offered 3.25% this year and lecturers are furious that nothing is being done about the seven to 10% pay gap between college and sixth-form teachers.
Natfhe's head of colleges, Barry Lovejoy, said: "This offer is a step backwards after we have made some progress in the past two years on narrowing the pay gap between college lecturers and schoolteachers.
"However, the majority of lecturers have still not received last year's pay award in full and this offer does nothing to address that issue. The impact on most colleges is that lecturers' pay falls somewhere between seven and 10% below schoolteachers.
"If this government is serious about implementing its skills strategy, it needs to act now to provide the funds to deal with this pay crisis and avoid another round of industrial action in further education."
He added the union was confident members would support strike action.
Today's announcement coincided with the publication of a report from the Learning and Skills Development Agency, which revealed that further education students have on average £400 less spent on them than students doing the same courses in schools.
The Association of Colleges said the report was proof of the government's failure to improve FE funding.
The AoC's chief executive, John Brennan, said: "This new report illustrates the true extent of the inequity between college and school sixth-form funding. It is indefensible that the two-thirds of young learners who study in colleges are being short-changed by at least £400 a year on average. It is time now to remedy this long-standing injustice."
