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A joint dispute was raised by the EIS/FELA and UNISON, with a decision to be made in the coming weeks about whether it should be escalated.

The merged college, which came as part of a cost-cutting regime, was launched last summer. A programme of reorganisation and redundancies followed, with big changes to the way some courses were delivered. Online replaced face-to-face teaching in a number of cases, and dozens of staff left.

Out of the three lead campuses involved, Stornoway took the biggest hit in terms of job losses. An Impact Assessment, completed just last month, revealed Stornoway had the highest staff reduction, with 16 employees departing.

Union members claim the Impact Assessment should have been done before merger and one member described it as “closing the stable door after the horse has bolted” with the merger now in place and the jobs gone.

Similarly, they claim the leadership, who insist there were no compulsory redundancies, failed to carry out a Stress Risk Assessment – as is required when there are factors in the workplace that could cause stress levels to rise – and that too had not been produced until recently.

One union member in Stornoway said: “There’s a huge level of stress and unhappiness. I’ve never seen an organisation where members view the organisation and the management so negatively.

“I do not believe the ELT (executive leadership team) has the support of staff, certainly not in this college. It’s bad and they’ve done nothing to address it. They’ve just continued to be distant. It’s sad.”

He added: “I’m amazed, looking at how outraged people are about the Sunday opening of Tesco, that nobody in the community seems to be shouting about it (but) that’s because it’s not known how bad it is.

“The staff are just disillusioned and that’s why they are in dispute. But at the moment we are still working that out. I just think it’s so desperately sad. Dispute is not a thing that the unions really want to get into but there was never any other option.”

Lydia Rohmer, Principal and Chief Executive of UHI North, West and Hebrides, said: “Changes to our operating structure have been necessary to achieve our merger ambition of creating a college which is financially sustainable and has capacity to respond to the once-in-a-generation opportunities created by the green industrial revolution in our operating area.

“We have consulted extensively with staff, both collectively through our trade unions and individually with staff members, on our operating structure. Working with them, we have made significant progress towards creating a sustainable college, reducing unnecessary duplication, creating operational efficiency, and developing a new integrated curriculum offer, which increases access to learning opportunities across our rural and island communities.”

She explained that the changes had come about after a significant reduction in financial support and rising costs, resulting in having them to identify £14 million of savings.

In terms of Stornoway being more adversely affected than the other centres in terms of jobs reduction, she said it was “not significantly higher" than the next highest site and is the third largest campus by staff population with the proportion of management staff the same as our other large campuses.

“Change of this scale is not easy and we recognise the challenge it has placed on staff,” said Ms Rohmer. “We have been listening to staff and have instigated improvements to how we engage and collaborate with them.

“We have undertaken a detailed stress risk assessment and taken actions that will further support staff health and wellbeing. We are making every effort to resolve the current local dispute with trade unions, which unfortunately continues to create uncertainty for staff, extra work and prevents some new vacancies being filled.”

She added: “Significant progress to address all the issues raised in the dispute resolution has been made, and we have committed to a two-stage review of our structure at six and 12 months to ensure it is fit for purpose, once fully implemented.

"We want to resolve this dispute as soon as possible to ensure our college can move forward, providing certainty to staff on their role in the new structure, and delivering for our students, communities and employers.”