The union said more than 90 per cent of term-time workers are women, that around 80 per cent of classroom support staff are unpaid for up to 13 weeks a year and that they lose out on holiday pay, sick pay and other benefits.
Many are also legally prevented from claiming job seekers' allowance during school holidays, which means a classroom assistant on a contracted salary of 8,000 a year actually earns only 6,400 a year.
Although the majority of nursery nurses in schools have 52-week contracts, Unison is concerned about a growing threat from local authorities to impose term-time-only pay, which it said was equal to at least a 20 per cent pay cut.
Christina McAnea, Unison's national secretary for education, said, 'School support staff, mostly women and often part-time, are sick of subsidising the system with low pay and inferior contracts. The employers must realise that there are increasing demands made of the whole school team and that their freedom to reduce the pay of some staff can no longer be tolerated.'
Unison's pay claim was lodged with the National Joint Council for Local Government Services earlier this month. The union said this was the first time that employment conditions of term-time workers would be discussed at the highest level of local government pay negotiations.
Unison's claim is that no school staff should 'suffer abatement of pay'
because of days they are not required to work during school holidays, and that employers and unions should work together on guidance 'to ensure clarity and consistency' on how pay and conditions are calculated, and produce guidance 'to ensure a standard approach to contracts for support staff'. The union also wants local authorities to collect information on the different types of contracts and pay and conditions of term-time employees and share this with unions at local and national level.
Unison wants a commitment from employers that all staff in education working a full-time school week will be treated as full-time employees, phased in over the next three years.
Lesley Skinner, head of local government services at the employers'
organisation, said a consultation with local authorities over pay and grading would take place during the next few months before a response was made to Unison. She added that employers disputed the basis of the union's claim that term-time working was discriminatory.
But Christine Lewis of Unison, author of a report earlier this year on term-time working in education, said, 'There is a growing feeling in staff who do these jobs that they are being exploited.'