Lecturers have launched a formal dispute

Union members of NATFHE at Deeside College in Flintshire have previously passed a vote of no confidence against their college principal, vice principal and human resources director.

The dispute centres around the college's plans to make seven non-teaching staff redundant - three of which are NATFHE members.

College managers say they have been forced to make cutbacks because of national funding constraints.

"We've declared a formal dispute on this today," said Kevin Brown from NATFHE.

"We now have a meeting between the local branch and the college management within the next 10 days.

Students are so far unaffected by the dispute

"If no progress is made we'll call in our regional officer, if stage one doesn't resolve the matter, stage two follows talks with the Principal."

An emergency branch meeting has been called for 19 November where members will discuss the compulsory redundancies.

Mr Brown a lecturer at Deeside College said if the discussions are not successful it could result in industrial action.

"We have to have consent for that, if we can't resolve it it's something that could be considered," he said.

Union officials have put forward several alternatives to college management with a view to saving the jobs.

However, Wil Edmund, the college principal, has previously said that with 800 people working at the institute, seven redundancies was a small number.