Unison, the UK's largest union, began balloting its 250,000 education workers, which include nursery nurses, teaching assistants and school administrators, on 10 June. It is demanding a 6 per cent increase or 1,750, whichever is greater, and said the 3 per cent offer would mean a rise of 15p an hour for the lowest-paid in the sector.
Christina McAnea, the union's national official for education staff, said, 'The Department for Education and Skills is putting the emphasis on support staff taking more and more responsibility, but it is only offering them a pathetic 3 per cent.
'The staff don't take strike action lightly. But the time has come to send a message to employers that we won't tolerate low pay.'
Ms McAnea said it was difficult to quantify the effect of the employers'
offer, 'because, unlike teachers, school support staff do not have national pay grades'. She said teachers' pay had risen by 38.5 per cent since 1994, compared with rises of 21.4 per cent for nursery nurses and 18.6 per cent for teaching assistants.
According to Unison, 80 per cent of teaching assistants earn less than Pounds 8,000 a year, and full-time nursery nurses around 12,500 - only fractionally more than annual allowances paid to council leaders. Ms McAnea said a survey of 10,000 local government staff last year had found that these groups of education workers were the most 'consistently unhappy'
about low pay.
One example is Catharyn Lawrence who, after 15 years as a nursery nurse, now helps to run a nursery school in Knottingley, West Yorkshire, and earns just over 13,000. She said, 'The Government's attitude is deplorable. It is creating good initiatives for childcare, but that is not reflected in our pay.'
Julie Thompson, a teaching assistant at a special needs school in Huddersfield, said 12 out of her 20 fellow assistants had to claim family credit, with some earning less than 8,000 for a 33-hour week. Teaching assistants had been penalised when the Government ended their right to claim eight weeks' jobseeker's allowance for unpaid school holiday periods, she said.
The Local Authority Employers Organisation has described the 3 per cent offer as 'final' and warned that any rise above this would threaten jobs and services.