Two months ago, senior managers at Richmond upon Thames College told me and all 126 of my teaching colleagues that they plan to send notices of dismissal following a 45-day statutory consultation unless we sign new contracts with worsened terms and conditions. This is commonly called ‘fire and rehire.’ 

I have worked at the college ever since completing my PGCE in 2008—my entire college teaching career. Despite facing low pay, the brunt of austerity with seemingly constant cuts, and rounds of redundancies across thirteen years, I have always loved teaching the students here. 

Over the years, I have taught everything from A Level English to entry level literacy, access to humanities, and GCSE resits. Like all my colleagues, I have gone above and beyond for the college because of my passion for further education as a vocation. For ordinary staff and students, the pandemic was particularly difficult. We struggled to deal with rocketing workloads and unpaid pastoral duties, all while cut off from the collectivity of the classroom.

Senior management at the college have never appreciated our hard work. That’s partly because while many teaching staff have been here for decades—and are deeply invested in the college and its students—management and their HR consultants rarely seem to last longer than a year.

This lack of appreciation has always stung, as our loyalty to the college has come at significant personal financial cost. As teachers at Richmond, we are paid significantly less than staff at other local colleges, and have immeasurably poorer pay and conditions than teachers at nearby schools. 

In further education, austerity never ended, and for us, it has meant constant real-terms pay cuts and being stripped of the bare basics we need to do our jobs. In this context, our holiday entitlement became one of the job’s saving graces.

But after years of injuries, the ultimate insult was added on 8 March this year, when management wrote to college teaching staff telling us of their plans to fire and rehire the entire teaching staff: unless we accepted new contracts with worsened terms and conditions, slashing 10 days from our annual leave, we would be dimissed without even receiving a redundancy payment. 

Rather than talking with UCU branch reps in good faith, managers began their ‘consultation’ by issuing a notice of redundancy, a section 188. As a branch rep, I was in early meetings with management, who told me that I was ‘mistaken’ to be upset and offended about the use of section 188. Apparently, I misunderstood reports about how workers at British Gas and P&O Ferries had been treated. 

Earlier this month, Richmond management suddenly broke off ‘negotiations’ and began to write to staff individually inviting us to one-to-one meetings, and issuing a deadline of 18 May for us to agree to the new contracts or face dismissal. 

That Richmond upon Thames College is joining a select group of the most vicious and disreputable employers in the country by deploying fire and rehire tactics against its entire teaching staff is bad enough in itself. 

What’s especially upsetting for me, though, is the outrageous justification management is using for this attack on us. Whenever student grades dip or the college is in a perilous financial position, management seeks to blame teaching staff. Why? To deflect from their continual disregard for the college community and their own negligence, which caused the college to be put into ‘special measures’ for financial mismanagement, and their incompetence in failing to complete the proposed merger with Harrow & Uxbridge College. 

Now, they claim our annual leave must be cut so we can do more training days, as though poor teaching is to blame for the college’s woes. In other words: we must be fired and rehired because we aren’t good enough teachers. Imagine being told this, not by colleagues, but by HR honchos and intimidating external management consultants who don’t know me or my students. It makes me sick. 

When we began balloting for strike action to beat back fire and rehire, I was afraid that—as management surely hoped—it would be difficult to organise colleagues when so many of us are feeling threatened and scared. 

But college management miscalculated: we smashed the Tory anti-union threshold with an 88% turnout. An overwhelming 97% of us who turned out voted YES to strike action. Branch membership is now increasing every day.

So, from today, we will be on strike for five days. This isn’t only a fight to defend our terms and conditions. We are taking a stand for staff in further education, and for workers across the country. 

If Richmond upon Thames College gets away with firing and rehiring 127 teachers in the midst of this unprecedented cost of living crisis, it will help embolden bosses everywhere to go on the offensive. That’s why we are striking to win. We hope to see many of you on the picket line.