The lecturers' union Natfhe today announced it would ballot members on industrial action over pay and urge them to reject a 3.7% pay offer by college employers.
Following a breakdown in talks with the Association of Colleges, the union's further education committee voted to continue plans for a two-day strike on October 3 and 4.
Despite £5m in additional government funding being made available this summer for lecturers' pay through the Teaching Pay Initiative, the two sides failed to reach agreement, although other unions have settled.
Paul Mackney, the union's general secretary, said the government has recognised that an extra effort had to be made to close the pay gap between school teachers and lecturers.
"It is a shame that the employers did not make the same effort to end this dispute. It's regrettable that the AoC was not able to come up with a statement as to how the £5m could have been used to revise their pay offer. Our members needed to see something to convince them that colleges were serious about lecturers achieving pay parity with schoolteachers by September 2004. The ball was in their court and unfortunately, despite everyone's best efforts, they brought nothing new to the table," he said.
A spokeswomen for the association said the pay round had been concluded and could not be reopened. "All colleges are having to make their own arrangements in the light of local circumstances.
"The association wanted to see a major uplift in pay for all college staff, not only our lecturers with whom we have sympathy. That has been our commitment from the start. It doesn't help to have strike action. All that does is undermine confidence in the sector and delay payments to pay packets," she added.
Colleges are facing acute recruitment difficulties in some specialist areas, such as maths and IT. The situation is likely to worsen if the government goes ahead with plans for more vocational education from the age of 14, meaning more students attending colleges.
