LECTURERS were today due to walk out on strike at a York college in a long-running row over pay.

The University and College Union (UCU) balloted its members across the country, including those at Askham Bryan College, over the management’s failure to award staff a pay deal agreed four years ago.

The ballot saw 70 per cent of its respondents vote in favour of strike action over the colleges’ failure to honour the pay deal agreed in 2004.

The union – which says the deal should have left a mid-ranking further education lecturer earning £4,511 more per year – has described the failure to honour the deal as one of the longest IOUs from management to staff in the history of industrial relations.

Classes will be cancelled and protests will be held by UCU members from 7.30am outside the main entrance to the campus.

It will be the first-time lecturers have staged a walk-out. The union had planned to strike in February, but it was called off at the last-minute due to impending talks.

Since then three meetings have taken place between union representatives and the college, but Julie Kelly, UCU regional officer, said they had proved inconclusive.

“It is a shame it has come to this,” she said. “But we have been left with no choice.”

The UCU regional organiser for Yorkshire and Humberside, John Giddins, said the walk-out was the union’s last resort, but “unavoidable”.

He said: “None of our members at Askham Bryan want to see industrial action. We have repeatedly asked the college to sit down with us and discuss ways to resolve the issue and avoid unnecessary disruption, but they have refused to enter into meaningful discussions and reneged upon earlier promises.”

The UCU’s head of further education, Barry Lovejoy, said: “It’s a real shame that things have come to this. The staff are not greedy; they are merely asking for the money they should have been paid four years ago. It is the intransigence of Askham Bryan College that has pushed members’ patience too far and forced them into industrial action.”

College principal Liz Philip, pictured, said: “The college has offered staff a favourable pay settlement which we encourage staff to accept.” She said the college would be open as normal.

In 2004 a two-year national agreement was drawn up that heralded pay parity for college lecturers with schoolteachers.

Thousands of further education lecturers had been unable to reach the higher pay levels enjoyed by schoolteachers.

The Press reported last February how 30 teachers at Askham Bryan faced the axe in order to save costs, as the college was facing a £500,000 deficit in its funds.