A national two-day strike by college lecturers, dubbed the worst paid teachers in northern Europe by their union, was due to start today, causing severe disruption across the further education sector.
The action by Natfhe became inevitable once the employers' body, the Association of Colleges, offered a 1.5% pay increase, described by the lecturers' union as "insulting".
Natfhe is demanding that members' pay should rise to close what it reckons is a 12% salary gap with schoolteachers, by 2004. Teachers have been offered a 3.5% rise this year.
Only a successful last-minute legal challenge by any single college, which could halt the action in all 283 institutions affected, could have preempted the strike. Any attempt by the government to repeat last year's 11th-hour offer of an extra £5m to nudge salaries up would not cut any ice with members, warned Natfhe's general secretary, Paul Mackney.
"That money was supposed to come in from April 1 but nobody has seen any of that money," he said.
"Lecturers are fed-up, angry and voting with their feet. Thousands will be striking today because they have had enough."
As pickets were being mounted at colleges nationwide, the extent of the demoralisation in the workforce was revealed. New research published today on lecturers' pay and morale shows that little has improved for them over five years but that the workforce is getting significantly older.
A survey of Natfhe members, commissioned by the union, shows that about 70% are aged between 45 and 65 and the vast majority of this group expresses disenchantment with their jobs.
Paul Mackney said: "It confirms the effect of the neglect of the further education sector and the strains that have been put on lecturers, in return for which they have the lowest pay of teachers in northern Europe."
Ivor Jones, the AoC's director of employment policy, said: "The expectation is an award that matches the schoolteachers' and the sector just hasn't got the money to make an award on that level, although it is our aspiration to match the schoolteachers."
Of Natfhe members who responded to a ballot for industrial action, a majority of 2:1 voted in favour of a strike.
Nevertheless, lecturers will not be able to stop work in all 315 further education colleges that could have been affected. The union blames stringent labour laws which require it to provide every employer, ie college, with exhaustive details about which of their personnel could go on strike so that the employers can take contingency steps.
Only the minutest margin of error is permitted, Mackney said. If any single college can show that a few details furnished by Natfhe are incorrect, they can seek an injunction that could collapse the whole strike, he said. In more than 30 colleges it was reckoned that local branches had been unable to gather sufficiently reliable data.
"We had a big argument last year about whether we could even hold a strike and many people thought it was impossible to do, including lawyers," he said.
The survey, entitled Overworked and Undervalued, was carried out by the Trade Union Research Unit at Ruskin College, Oxford. More than 4,000 questionnaires were distributed to lecturers and 1,900 were completed.
Of the sample, 71% were full-time staff and 56% earned less than £25,000 a year. Nearly a third were paid between £25,000 and £29,999 a year.
Two-thirds of those surveyed had graduate and/or postgraduate degrees. And two thirds are thinking of leaving further education.
In the last survey of this type, in 1996, 44% of the respondents were under 44. In the new survey, that group has shrunk to 28%.
One lecturer surveyed said: "The morale of lecturing staff is at an all-time low and I have been a lecturer for 27 years. If I was younger I would be leaving."
