Colleges are still careering towards a strike despite the government's announcement of an extra £32m towards this year's pay award.
It's a start but it's not enough, was the response from unions and employers.
Paul Mackney, general secretary of the lecturers' union Natfhe, accused ministers of timing the announcement to try to split the unprecedented solidarity across the college workforce for industrial action.
The Association of Colleges, which two weeks ago refused to reopen pay negotiations with the unions, said that the offer would not change the situation because it was not "consolidated", ie it was a one-off payment that was not guaranteed to be carried over into future years.
Natfhe members have already voted to strike, but four other unions representing teaching and support staff are still in the process of balloting.
"On its own this package will do nothing to appease the anger of lecturers and support staff who are currently facing a derisory 2.3% pay offer," Mackney said.
"I have no doubt that there will be massive support for the planned stoppage on November 5."
Time was running out for the government to meet Natfhe's demand that lecturers' pay should regain parity with schoolteacher salaries by September 2004, he said.
The cash was officially made public by the further education minister, Margaret Hodge, on Friday. Unions and the employers' body, the Association of Colleges, were tipped off about it three days earlier, on the eve of a joint meeting with officials at the DfES.
But that came as no surprise to them since the education secretary, Estelle Morris, had been expected to announce the £32m in the speech she made to launch her strategy for reforming further education at a conference in London on June 19.
Draft copies of the speech seen before the conference contained the cash package, but it was omitted in her delivery, when she ruled out using a £43m budget "underspend" to boost the 2.3% pay offer.
"We find it strange that this announcement was delayed from July until now, when the college support staff unions are about to be balloted," said Mackney.
Since June no advance has been achieved in pay discussions.
The new cash is offered as part of the Teachers' Pay Initiative for lecturers, now in its second year, and to launch a "College Pay Initiative" for support staff.
Margaret Hodge made clear that £20m would go to lecturers, bringing this year's TPI up to £140m, or roughly £1,000 a head if shared evenly among the sector's 130,000 lecturers. The remaining £12m would mean £500 apiece for 24,000 support staff, she said.
Her figures were propmptly disputed by Unison's national officer for further education, Christina McAnea, who said there were 86,000 support staff in colleges.
"How are colleges going to determine who are the 24,000 chosen few who will get this money, and what will they do with the rest of the staff?" she asked.
Unison would still go ahead with what is its first ever ballot on industrial action in further education, she said. There were similar responses from the GMB and T&G unions.
Gerald Imison, deputy general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: "The key to sustained improvements in the morale of lecturers lies in increasing core funding, not in boosting payments, which are essentially peripheral."
Ivor Jones, the AoC's director of employment policy, said that even if the £32m were consolidated in core funding it would represent only 1% on the pay bill, bringing the pay offer up to 3.3%.
"That is still less than what the lecturers are asking for," he said.
The schoolteachers' pay offer is currently 3.5%. The further education unions are jointly seeking at least that this year.
