Threat of a halted city

More than 40 schools closed yesterday on the first day of a 48-hour strike called by Unison and the GMB over a pay dispute between teaching assistants and their employer, the city council.

Union leaders told teaching assistants that unlimited strike action was now a possibility and that members from other council departments would down tools in support of the strike.

It could lead to chaos, disrupting schools, bin collections and other services indefinitely.

The council is astonished at the strike action and says only 40 per cent of the 1,000 teaching assistants working in Brighton and Hove voted for strikes.

Education officials say nine out of ten of the assistants will get a pay rise under the council's new offer, bringing their wages up to as much as £9.90 an hour.

The rate of pay would be more than East and West Sussex County Councils and almost every other local authority in the UK, they claim.

But the striking teaching assistants have rejected the offer because they say they will get fewer weeks of paid work each year.

Unison and the GMB, which have 4,600 members in Brighton and Hove, are to call for two further days of strikes and say members in other council departments are demanding their branch secretaries spread the strike across the authority.

The further 24-hour strikes are planned for December and January but the action will be timed to miss mock exams in secondary schools and Christmas parties for children.

Alex Knutson, of Unison, said £10,000 had already been made available to cover the pay of striking members and the Brighton and Hove branch would be asking the national union for up to £100,000 to cover a walkout of indefinite length.

Mark Turner, of the GMB, said teaching assistants across Sussex would discuss the possibility of further strike action next month.

More than 500 teaching assistants demonstrated outside Brighton Town Hall yesterday as councillors filed through the front door for a meeting at which 2.5 per cent rises in their basic allowance were agreed and Alan McCarthy was confirmed as the new £145,000-a-year chief executive of the council.

The rally followed an earlier demonstration when hundreds of protesters marched to the council offices at Kings House in Grand Avenue, Hove.

Teaching assistants at the second rally were joined by parents and children, many waving placards and chanting.

Mr Knutson, who has rejected council leader Ken Bodfish's offer to go to the conciliation service ACAS, said: "I will never sign an agreement that does away with weeks of pay for low-paid women workers in this authority.

"If Coun Bodfish thinks I am being simple then, yes, I am a simple person. When I started this process it was about grades only and when I sign an agreement it will be exclusively on that."

It was "an absolute disgrace" to confirm the chief executive's wage inside the council building while low-paid workers were demonstrating outside.

Mr Turner added: "The action we take will be whatever we deem necessary at the time.

"If this council wants to sit it out then we will sit it out.

"We have got the support nationally and we have got the funds so if there is going to be an indefinite strike, then so be it.

"The other alternative is to escalate the issue to the entire membership on the whole issue of single status for all the GMB.

"Shop stewards in our ranks are saying if this is happening to these people we have got to show our support."

A council binman and GMB member said his colleagues were angry about the teaching assistants' pay offer.

He said: "Should a picket line suddenly appear outside the depot no one here is going to cross it.

"This would be secondary picketing and would not be an official union dispute but there would still be a lot of people left waiting outside.

"We do collect rubbish from schools but we are not crossing picket lines."

The shouts of the demonstrators could be heard inside the town hall as councillors assembled for the meeting, with the rise in councillors' allowances among the items on the agenda.

Coun Bodfish gave a brief statement pleading with the unions to go ACAS and vowed he would not bow to threats of all-out strikes.

He told The Argus: "I have been watching the protests today and speaking with some of the teaching assistants.

"Some of them do feel very strongly but they have been given misinformation about the situation.

"At the end of the day, if we meet these demands we would have to knock on the doors of the people of this city and ask if they would pay an extra one per cent on their council tax.

"Experience both locally and nationally has been, unfortunately, that they would not.

"I have to reflect the view of the general public."

David Hawker, director of the children, family and schools department, apologised for the disruption the strikes would cause.

He said: "In the sense of will the strike action change our offer, then no, this will make no difference.

"Our offer is fair and generous. We have checked around other local authorities and there are no other areas that are offering teaching assistants anything other than a term-time contract.

"A teaching assistant in Brighton and Hove will earn substantially more than those working in both East and West Sussex."

Questions from other political leaders were not permitted during the meeting and the strike did not appear on the agenda.

Outside the town hall, Green Party members were the only councillors to voice support for the teaching assistants.

Councillor Keith Taylor, the group convenor, said: "There are no negotiations taking place and, frankly, that's not good enough.

"We are not going to stand by and watch as thousands of families are inconvenienced and education disrupted.

"We want firm action and we want it now - we want a fair and just resolution to this dispute."

Councillor Garry Peltzer Dunn, leader of the Conservative opposition, said: "I think it is very sad that this has reached this stage.

"I do believe the offer which has been made is reasonable and indeed exceeds the rates paid by East and West Sussex."

Councillor David Watkins, leader of the Lib Dem group, said: "We have been listening very carefully.

"We think the teaching assistants clearly have a strong case but the question will always comes down to where can we find the financial resources to meet their demands."

Earlier in the day, a handful of teaching assistants were joined by union representatives outside Varndean School in Balfour Road, Brighton.

A steady stream of children poured through the school gates, past the picket line. A few hundred yards down the road however, the entrance to Balfour Junior School was unusually quiet.

Classroom assistant Diane Askew, who works at Longhill School in Rottingdean, said: "I would like to see a proper wage that people can actually live on. I'm a single person and have to have tax credits to bring up my wage. What I would really like is for people to come in to school and see what we actually do.

"I know of one lady who does 30 hours a week for £8,000 a year. But more often than not she does about 36 hours a week. I think they are just trying to do things on the cheap. We just want a fair day's pay."

A teaching assistant based at Varndean, who asked to remain anonymous, said: "We know it will be difficult for the schools to struggle on without us but are all united - there is a real strength of feeling which is why we've gone to these lengths.

"The children have been very supportive - I have not had one negative comment - as are all the teachers."

Varndean deputy headteacher Ian Batty said: "We respect their right as a trade union to take action.

"As far as our teaching assistants go, they do an absolutely superb job here and play a vital role in our school."

Protesters were also out in force at St Mary Magdalen's Catholic Primary and Nursery School in Spring Street, Brighton, which remains open during the strike.

Despite parents having little time to make arrangements it appeared most were turning to family and friends or taking the day off as opposed to paying for a registered childminder.

A spokeswoman for Childcare Information SVC in Brighton, which offers parents information and advice about childcare in the area, said it had not noticed any significant rise in calls this week and there had been no specific requests in relation to the strike.

Alison Smith, whose six-year-old Saoirse attends Elm Grove Primary, said: "I'm behind the teaching assistants. Their wages are really low and from what I've seen at Elm Grove the teaching assistants are invaluable. They are part and parcel of the school."

Sharon Anderson, a parent at Somerhill Junior School in Hove, said: "I'm very sympathetic to the assistants. They do a very good job."

Nine out of ten readers who have texted our vote line on the action have so far supported the strike. But what do you think?

Text us now. Enter SUSTRIKE followed by a space and YES or NO to 80408.

The results will appear in Saturday's Argus.