COLLEGE lecturers are staging two days of industrial action throughout the area.

Around 20 staff rallied support at the gates of Ayrshire College’s Kilwinning campus.

Their actions are not a demand for money, but asking for a previous agreement to be honoured, one woman claimed.

She said: “This is not about more pay, it is about equal pay which the government agreed to through national bargaining, 14 months ago, when the colleges merged.

“Part of national bargaining is when everyone is paid the same pay for doing the same job, which makes sense.

“The deal was put on the table and was accepted, but what the employers have come back and said is that is not part of the package.

“But we would never have agreed that. 

“What it means, in effect, that many people are taking a pay cut.”

A spokesman for the Colleges Scotland Employers Association told the Herald this week: “The only way to resolve this is through negotiation, not strikes. 

“We firmly believe the offer on the table of an average nine per cent pay rise that will bring all lecturers’ salaries up to £40,000, with 56 days’ annual leave and 24 hours a week of teaching time is a very reasonable one.”