COLLEGE lecturers manned a picket line yesterday in protest over proposed job cuts at Middlesbrough College.

The two-hour strike at the Marton Campus was called in response a to plan to cut between 100 and 120 jobs.

The college's branch secretary of lecturers' union NATFHE, Doug Craig, defended yesterday's walkout saying the academics were left with little alternative.

He said: "After a ballot is held you have 28 days to call strike action, but 14 of those would have been taken up with the Easter break.

"Therefore we had to act now but we timed the strike to minimise disruption to the students.

"We are doing this to save jobs and not cause problems for the college.

"At the moment, we still haven't got the figures for the compulsory redundancies but we are hopeful it won't come to that.

"They are looking for between 100 and 120 staff to go and there are about 70 who have opted for voluntary redundancy but that still leaves a significant number."

College principal John Hogg said the strike had a minimal affect on student life.

"We have four campuses and there was about 50 demonstrators, but I'm not sure how many were actually lecturers.

"That represents about eight per cent of our staff so you can judge for yourself the level of the impact," he said.

"It did affect the areas where students require lunchtime supervision - we couldn't guarantee it would be available.

"And this action did affect some of the students who need a little help with their studies."