While Lynn Daly is spot on (The Argus, November 30) in suggesting the teaching assistants and their trade unions wish to reach a negotiated settlement with Brighton and Hove City Council over their pay dispute, it is impossible to do this when the council is refusing to talk about the fundamental problem - their proposal to cut four to seven paid weeks.

UNISON and the GMB have spent nine months of this year trying to get across to senior officers that it is unfair to recognise the skilled work TAs carry out with pupils and give them new grades for it but claw back the new salary by cutting paid weeks.

The council have put forward the idea of, first, conciliation, and now arbitration. But the reason the unions and their members will not entertain this is quite simple.

For either to work, both sides need to accept compromise and it is a fact the TAs' side has moved twice in putting forward proposals to resolve this dispute without the need for industrial action.

The council has not moved an inch on paid weeks and made it very clear it does not intend to do so.

That is why TAs very reluctantly have been forced into the first ever strike by schools support staff.

TAs are professional staff carrying out a difficult but effective role in schools - they are low paid, mostly women, workers who deserve decent salaries, not this disgraceful treatment by their employer.

-Alex Knutsen, UNISON branch secretary