College leaders are right to stand up for students and the taxpayer

To The Editor,

COLLEGE leaders are to be applauded for taking a tough stance against college lecturers who take part in another marking boycott ("Colleges agree plan to dock pay from staff who take part in marking boycott", The Herald, February 10). It's about time somebody in this country stood up to out-of-control trade unions.

Following their long summer holiday last year, FE lecturers mounted a similar resulting boycott. They did so because they were dissatisfied with the arrangement which sees the taxpayer fund them to have 13 weeks' holiday per year. They were further dissatisfied that they earn only £40,000 compared to Scotland's median gross annual salary for full-time workers, which is £33,332. And they were even further dissatisfied with their chalk-face workload of 20-odd hours per week. They were dissatisfied then, and they're dissatisfied still. I've come to the conclusion that they will never be satisfied, and that they will always come back for more.

The consequence of last year's resulting boycott by well-salaried, superannuated lecturers was that young people's lives were put on hold because they couldn't complete their apprenticeships. The boycott similarly stopped first-year construction apprentices, who barely earn £6 per hour, from progressing to their next stage and receiving a £2p/h wage rise for which they'd worked all year. Everything and everyone was to wait until the lecturers got more. In the topsy-turvy world of progressive politics it's Mr Bumble who demands more from Oliver. What is in the interests of apprentices, their families and their employers was simply a means to the lecturers' end. And the end is, more. More, more, more. And when they get it, they still want more.

Now they want to do the same thing again. So it's right that college leaders stand up for the taxpayer as well as their students. But perhaps more radical solutions need to be considered. Perhaps the argument for the development of technical schools could simply do away with the need for a college sector altogether. Perhaps the taxpayer could do more with less.

Yours sincerely, 

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https://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/24115159.college-leaders-right-stand-students-taxpayer/