The long running wrangle over classroom assistant pay has now reached a critical period, with management and the unions frantically cobbling together a so-called proposal over the summer months to try to bring an end to the dispute.

NIPSA classroom assistants, general assistants and nursery assistants throughout the North took strike action for one day during June to highlight management intransigence and failure to deal with their job evaluation. Management in turn, frantically arranged meetings with principals to prepare the ground, sow the seeds of propaganda, and prepare for a show down if staff were not prepared to accept scraps from the bargaining table.

Management are to come forward with an offer in the weeks ahead, one that has already been given an early bath of publicity amongst the assistants, and has been shown the contempt it deserves. What it will mean is that very few will get any sort of recognition in their pay, and that the greater mass of staff will get shafted.

Across the South Eastern Education and Library Board (SEELB), it is believed that around a maximum of 250 out of 1,600 classroom assistants will benefit from the proposal from management.

The stark reality is that management have been guaranteed £21 million to carry out this exercise. They are trying to get the jobs to fit into the money allocated, whether people are entitled to certain monies or not.

If the unions give proper leadership, this group of relatively militant workers could achieve a decent wage and outcome. To achieve this will probably involve extensive strike action and the unions now need to prepare the members for that eventuality.

Management should also be exposed for manipulating a system that was supposed to give fairness and equity to these vital public servants.

Government spin doctors are working over time to undermine public confidence in education and providing a cover for massive cuts. Behind the press headlines, cuts are being hammered home.

Children, communities and employees in the education system have been hit time and time again as libraries face closure, lollipop patrols are obliterated, school meals are facing severe cuts, and school buses are cut. This school year, only the first year of a three year programme of cuts, special needs children have been picked out for special attention by the government. Children who received support in June are finding that help has been slashed in September.

Education workers knew these cuts were coming. That is why they took strike action last May. The action pushed the government back and forced a partial retreat and a promise of an extra £12.5 million for the education budget.

Unfortunately, the momentum was lost over the summer and there was little sign of the unions getting it back in September. For special needs children who are coping with anything from physical disability to a learning difficulty, the cuts mean that they have been thrown on a discrimination conveyor belt that starts with failure in school and moves on to low paid jobs or unemployment.

A number of important local campaigns do exist but a reinvigorated opposition needs to be built across education. A step in that direction has been taken in the South Eastern Education and Library Board area where two teachers' unions, INTO and NASUWT have linked up with two unions for non teaching staff, NIPSA and UNISON to form a united committee to resist the cuts. If that committee can link all the unions at a local school level, a powerful united campaign of resistance can be built.