Brighton and Hove teaching assistants turn out in force to strike

Brighton and Hove special-needs teaching assistant Simon Parker, 30, spent part of the hour before Friday's strike and protest-march fighting with his partner about money. He will strike on the planned day of action in January, as well, if Brighton and Hove council doesn't accept assistants' concerns about a proposed new pay package.

Like the hundreds of assistants who took strike action on Friday, Simon Parker was furious at council plans to reduce the number of paid weeks in assistants' contracts by five. He also thought that assistants were desperately in need of better wages generally.

'I don't necessarily think we should get the same as teachers, but we need to something that we can live on. You do spend a lot of time teaching, as well as the assistant's work. If I could have a pay increase, I could live with that.'

Smon Parker takes home about £1200 a month at the moment, but not all of it comes from the assistant's job: he has two cleaning jobs as well. He works as a special-needs teaching assistant for the main part of the day, and as a school cleaner for several hours before and after the assistant's job. 'We're up against it,' he smiled wryly, as he described the domestic hostilities with his partner again. 'We're so skint.'

Simon Parker said that he was getting angrier. He and his partner had just had a baby, and were often tired and irritated. The 750 teaching assistants who began yesterday's march outside the Brighton Town Hall in Barthlomew Square were equally annoyed.

They kicked the morning off by shouting and blowing horns and whistles for Children, Families and Schools Director David Hawker - a person that assistants like to refer to as Hawker the Talker, among other memorable titles. David Hawker didn't show, though - 'he's hiding, he's hiding, he's hiding in there,' people shouted, pointing at the Town Hall - so they took the march downtown.

This was the third day of strike action. Union organisers estimated that there were at least as many strikers as there had been on November 25 and 26 (about 750 a day), and that they expected as many again on the next planned day of action in January.

Brighton and Hove Unison Branch Secretary Alex Knutsen said that the strike action would escalate if the council refused to negotiate, and that the council needed to note that. The council also needed to note that messages of support and donations were flooding in from union branches around the country: he read out of a list of branch donations of at least £500.

Alex Knutsen said that donations from union branches around the country had made it possible to pay strikers during the strike action 'so that you will not suffer over Christmas.'

The strikers were furious at a front-page Brighton and Hove Argus anti-union story which said that the strike had caused children and parents to suffer and that described the donations as a Christmas 'cash bonus' for strikers. 'Are you from the Argus?' they asked reporters they saw on the march. 'Get out if you're from the Argus.' Assistants average a take-home salary of £9,000 a year, and 98% are part-time women workers.

Striker Christine Mihocic said she found the council's ethics difficult. She has worked as an individual-needs assistant for four years, and takes home about £850 a month for her part-time job. 'It's not part-time, though,' she said. 'I'm supposed to work until 3pm, but I often work until five. You don't just leave at three.'

She doesn't get flexitime, and said that living on her present income was a challenge. 'I've got a 17-year-old daughter who is at college. I mean, you have to support them.' She felt that the council was trying to pretend it was acting fairly by re-evaluating assistants' job grades.

She said the proposal to reduce the number of paid weeks for assistants proved that the council had no intention of improving assistants' conditions, nor of acknowledging that they made a contribution. 'What are we meant to do for those weeks? Is the council going to give us a job for those weeks off? No.'

Simon Parker said that he 'loved special-needs' work - 'we do numeracy and literacy, and I just started working on digital technology with the kids' - but that he'd prefer not to have two other jobs to support it. 'The fact that they (the council) want to take paid weeks away is not exactly for our benefit,' he said.

Brighton and Hove teaching assistants will strike again on January 6, 2005.