OCTOBER 1998   'National' Framework 'Agreement' yields worst of both worlds!   LEAF LAUNCHES LEGAL TEST CASES WITH EXCELLENT PROSPECTS OF SUCCESS   Five years after incorporation, a period which has seen an unprecedented and sustained attack on lecturers professionalism and living standards, NATFHE and the AoC have agreed at national level a 'framework' for a model contract which is virtually identical to the original CEF contract the union claimed to oppose so strongly. In a number of respects, the new 'agreement' is even worse than the CEF model contract opposed by lecturers throughout the sector. We will explain why below.   Characteristically, the 'agreement' has been hailed as a step forward by the union side spokespeople:   "A national system providing a safety net for everyone" claims Paul Mackney, NATFHE's General Secretary.   "........a common agenda" choruses Sue Berryman, the union's Chief Negotiator.   Needless to say, neither of these worthies will have cause to have to rely on the 'safety net' they have woven, since they will not work to the conditions they have negotiated on your behalf.   So, let us analyse the framework agreement and see if it matches up to the grand claims made by the union's representatives. A number of clear questions need to be addressed.       Lecturers have a clear choice   Only LEAF has a strategy and policies which can protect lecturer's interests.   This information is intended to help staff to understand the dire implications of the AoC/ NATFHE Framework Agreement.   We are opposed to this agreement because it undermines the very foundations of your status as a professional lecturer, as we will explain clearly.   However, we (and only we) also offer an alternative to the future that is being mapped out for you. In this brief paper we have set out some of the key issues only. If you require more detailed information, LEAF will happily supply it. The framework agreement is only four pages long but it is accompanied by 11 (eleven) policy documents or guidance notes. NATFHE's leaders have agreed the whole bundle and they hope you will do the same.   Policy documents do not have the status of collective agreements or other contractual terms.   They can be varied without your consent, and the local contract is written to enable this to take place quite easily. They could dramatically affect the ways in which a college management deals with members of staff. We shall discuss these issues in this newsletter.         DOES THE AGREEMENT PROVIDE FOR 'MINIMUM CONDITIONS OF SERVICE'?   Whose minimum conditions or standards?   At a minimum the college can require you to work 27 hours a week in class contact, and more if they wish.   In 'exceptional circumstances' the employer can exceed this limit according to the document. Nowhere is the term 'exceptional circumstances' clearly defined, and it is clear that the decisions on lecturers individual workloads will rest with college managers.   The framework provides for no contractual limitations that any union could enforce. The 22 other duties of lecturers are to be carried out in addition to this teaching load.   In its 'Special Edition' of The Lecturer, NATFHE states that the past five years has seen "massive and unacceptable increases in members' workloads".   Elsewhere in the same publication it is claimed that the new framework agreement "reflects the vast majority of local arrangements".   Either the workloads are unacceptable or they are not.   If they are (and no sane person can doubt they are) they should not be legitimised, and worsened, by a further agreement.   In fact the entire logic of NATFHE's argument is back to front.   Any union worth its salt in a situation such as the one we face would be arguing for contractually-binding maximums on teaching hours, related duties, weekly and annual hours.   The truth is that this agreement is a comprehensive definition of contractual arrangements to suit the employer's needs.   To even argue that it offers protection to professionals is to insult their intelligence.   This seems to have dawned on Paul Mackney of NATFHE, who is quoted in the Times Educational Supplement (25 September 1998) as saying that he could not recommend a settlement which involved regular working of 27 hours in the classroom.   Read your 'Framework agreement', Mr. Mackney! You have agreed to precisely that, and more.       IS THE AGREEMENT A RETURN TO NATIONAL COLLECTIVE BARGAINING?   The agreement is a national collective agreement, but this fact in itself has little consolation. It is emphatically not a collective agreement like the Silver Book. Unlike the Silver Book, its terms are not binding on individual corporations. This means that if it is voted for by NATFHE's members it will be 'available' for corporations to use. They will grab it with both hands because it will allow most if not all Corporations to gain as many extra teaching hours from their lecturers as they wish, without committing them to any binding national agreements. But here's the rub: Once adopted by your corporation, the terms of the framework will be binding on you!   This is because the model contract which exists in every college contains a clause to this effect. The corporations will be able to get you to work longer, have fewer holidays (in most cases) and will not be obliged to give you pay increases! Pay is subject to separate negotiation, and, like the framework contract, is not binding on corporations. In fact there is a barely disguised hint that without the agreement of lecturers to the new worsened terms, no money will be available for many thousands of lecturers.   As has been mentioned, the policy documents of the framework agreement do not form part of any collective terms. But they will be enforced against you if the Framework agreement is adopted by your Corporation.   NATFHE has agreed a particularly pernicious 'Guidance Note' called 'Handling Incapability'.   This helpful guidance will enable the College to dispense with your services quickly and easily if they consider you are not up to the mark. Needless to say, decisions like this will remain firmly in the hands of college employers. Every member of the lecturing staff should ask to see a copy of this document.       IS PAY NOW SUBJECT TO NATIONAL NEGOTIATION AS A RESULT OF A NATIONAL CONDITIONS FRAMEWORK?   No.   The agreement has been carefully worded to separate pay from changes in conditions, to the advantage of the employer.   Put simply, the Framework agreement, if ratified by NATFHE members will mean that you might get a pay increase, but you will undoubtedly get worsened terms.       WHERE WILL THE FRAMEWORK LEAVE THE VARIOUS CATEGORIES OF TEACHING STAFF?   Locally negotiated college contract. If you have any limitations on hours below 27 a week and 880 a year, and or over 42 days holiday a year (including college closure), you will immediately see that your conditions will be considerably worsened.   Silver Book. For the minority of staff who have stuck to this contract, and suffered considerable financial penalty as a result, the framework contract is a bullet in the head. You are being asked to throw away your sacrifices for the sake of NATFHE's status as recognised body.   Non negotiated contract. Your contractual status will now be that the "massive and unacceptable increases"´ in workload will be regularised and legitimised. There is little doubt that corporations will be enabled to continue to require you to teach many more hours than is acceptable or safe. They will have the blessing of NATFHE for this!   Agency staff. Agency staff will remain agency staff. The unions have accommodated themselves to this reality with hardly a squeak. They are to 'discuss' the issues in a working party.   Hybrid staff. The blurring of the distinctions between lecturers and other types of staff, who have a quasi-teaching role, such as demonstrators, facilitators, workshop managers, etc., has been accepted in the framework document, together with their inferior conditions of service and pay.   This highly dangerous admission, which does nothing for this group of staff, means that a new, much lower benchmark has been created and has been given the blessing of 'both sides'. This in turn will lead to inexorable downward pressure on pay and conditions.   Remember that the AoC has already expressed the 'concern' that support staff are not as highly valued as lecturers are. Further, they wish to explore ways of 'harmonising' the terms and conditions of staff in the sector. 'Both sides' are committed to exploring these issues in the new working parties that have been set up by the 'Framework agreement'.   If you have been reading this carefully, the alarm bells will be ringing in your head by now.   In point of fact there are not 'two sides' in discussion on your future, but one.   As Sue Berryman, NATFHE's Chief Negotiator candidly put it in The Lecturer (special edition), during the last year: "Both sides began to develop a common agenda".   The question that you must make your mind up about, dear lecturer, is whether or not this 'common agenda' contains anything which advances your interests.   LEAF is very clear about this point: there is one agenda indeed.   It is the agenda of the AoC, and has remained unchanged since Roger Ward became the Chief Executive of the predecessor body, the CEF. It has led to disaster for professionals, and resistance to de-professionalisation led to the creation of LEAF.   The new Framework document is a serious deterioration in conditions and prospects. It could be fatal for your professional status.   Only we offer an alternative, which puts your interests to the fore.       IS IT NOT BETTER TO ACCEPT A SETTLEMENT WHICH AT LEAST ENDS THE DISPUTE?   Only if you think you should meekly accept a degraded status and a long term decline in your pay and conditions. The inevitable result of accepting the New Framework Agreement as the basis of a national contract, is that it leaves all lecturers at the mercy of local developments, crises and initiatives.   Already, lecturers salaries and conditions of service are 'factored in' as cost considerations in colleges overall strategic planning, and formula budgeting exercises. The AoC will renew its assault on conditions and pay the moment any settlement is reached. This is certain.       WHAT ELSE IS ON THE HORIZON?   The 'common agenda' spoken of by NATFHE is, of course, that of the Association of Colleges. It contains proposed measures which are seriously threatening to your career and prospects, including:   Harmonisation of pay and conditions This will be achieved by encouraging single table bargaining, and developing 'imaginatively' the job of the lecturing professional by the creation of more and more 'hybrid' posts which combine the jobs of lecturer and support/ancillary worker, with different pay and conditions. This is exactly the strategy employed by the CEF to undermine the Silver Book national conditions of service. It is up to you to learn the lessons from this episode and resolve not to allow history to repeat itself. NATFHE, unfortunately, have learned nothing at all. Their 'Framework Agreement' merely 'notes' the existence of this new category of employee.   Advancing the date of the pay settlement. This is firm AoC policy, and will result in lecturers losing a further five to six months of pay increase. Again, NATFHE claims there is a good trade union reason why this should be discussed with the AoC. They are talking rubbish, of course, but you will be the loser, if you allow it to happen.   Agency staff accepted as the norm The spectre of a 'virtual college', with a minority of established staff looms ever closer. The Framework Agreement accepts without comment the concept of Agency staff in FE. You can be sure that with this 'recognition' in their back pockets, the AoC will be looking for a massive increase in the proportion of this category of staff in Britain's colleges. What a disgrace, and a serious danger to your position.   Performance related pay This development is set to assume more importance as a management tool in the future.   These developments are all around the corner.   Our aim is not to frighten or depress you, but to forewarn you.   We are here and ready to take up the cudgels on your behalf. But, and it is a big but, we need your support in massive numbers. We represent your aspirations to professional status and high standards. And, it is important to understand this; we are the only lecturers organisation capable of delivering on this aspiration.   NATFHE's policies will as surely consign your professionalism to the graveyard, as would Roger Ward, if he were made Education Minister.   We believe that this is your last best chance, and we urge you to take it.       WHAT IS LEAF'S ALTERNATIVE?   Our strategy, it has to be said at the outset, was not plucked from the air. It is rooted in the real situation facing lecturers and is based upon the situation facing us as a single group. Whatever contract you are on, we collectively face a future in which our professional careers are at the mercy of a marketed, outcome driven system in which colleges are fragmented into individual 'competing' (in the widest sense of the word) cost centres. This dynamic is tearing away at the integrity of the system as an expression of a national provision. Yet it need not be like this!       HOW CAN LEAF CHANGE THE PICTURE?   First of all, we need massive and continuous support from the profession, with a commensurate increase in membership of LEAF. Already encouraging signs are emerging that lecturers up and down the country recognise that LEAF's strategy offers a real prospect of success.   The Association of Colleges (AoC) is terrified at the prospect of lecturers aligning themselves behind LEAF.   We are poised to win a famous victory for all working people who have had their contractual status trashed in the way that happened to us. A great deal of money is at stake, and we confidently expect many millions of pounds, perhaps hundreds of millions, to be returned to lecturers as a result of our success. Isn't that worth supporting?   Secondly, after succeeding with our test cases, we will help drive through changes in the pay and conditions framework for further education teachers, aimed at securing binding collective agreements, relating to pay and conditions and other matters affecting the interests of professionals.   None of this will be easy, and it is certain that the employers will resist tooth and nail. But they will be faced with a confident and determined group of professionals and a representative body in LEAF which will prove to be more than a match for them.   When we have reached this stage, we shall seek to cooperate with all parties in building a further education system which we can all be proud of. In this scenario, lecturers (and students) views will have equal weight with that of other parties. Never again will we allow a national system of education to be hijacked for narrow and selfish interests.   This is the prospect we are holding out to you, and we urge you to take it.     IN SUMMARY   The NATFHE/ AOC Agreement offers you nothing whatsoever in return for the sacrifices you are to be expected to make. It is, in fact, a blueprint to end your professional career.   LEAF's alternative is now ready to be pursued. The national test cases are to be heard at the earliest opportunity.   You have a clear choice: accept a framework which will allow almost unlimited exploitation, with no prospects of the right to pay increases, or choose LEAF's path of seeking lawfully binding collective agreements, which at least offer the opportunity to negotiate on matters of pay and conditions.   Our test cases are ready, prepared, and have an excellent prospect of success.         © LEAF 1998   Return to top of Page