BY MICHAEL DEVLIN

LECTURERS at the North's 16 Further Education colleges, including Omagh College and the North West Institute in Strabane, staged yet another one-day walk out yesterday (Wednesday) taking the total of days in which students have been without classes to seven. However, union members are now fervently hoping that the North's new devolved government could bring an end to the stalemate.

Essentially a dispute over pay, lecturers – led by the University and College Union (UCU) – are seeking pay parity with school-teachers. Currently lecturers earn on average £3,400 a year less than teachers for similar work.

"We are being optimistic," UCU branch chair, Angela O'Reilly-Colton began. "We haven't taken the decision to take industrial action lightly but it is ludicrous to think that we can do the same job as teachers but get paid a whole lot less."

At the end of February the case for pay parity has been rejected by the government's Public Sector Pay Committee despite support from Peter Hain's office. Lecturers have also had support from all of the main political parties. Can devolution bring a resolution?

She continued, "Again, we would like to be optimistic and we would like to think that the current political situation with devolution could go some way to helping our cause. So far over the past few months we have had a lot of support from the political parties and we would like to see that continue."

UCU officials met with the employers last Wednesday expecting a pay offer due from last September. No offer was made.

"Hopefully this latest strike action will be sufficient to make someone sit up and listen," Ms O'Reilly-Colton said.

Last April, lecturers, in a secret ballot, overwhelmingly voted for industrial action and since then there have been six strike days across the 16 colleges and "severe disruption" to college administration as a result of lecturers working to rule and withdrawing goodwill. And yet according to the local chair, the students are still 100 per cent behind their lecturers.

"The students, certainly are still behind us and as professionals we don't like to take it to this extreme," Angela O'Reilly-Colton added. "We've been left with no choice and anything we do, we do with a heavy heart."