Slugger O'Toole

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Deborah O'Toole

Today marks the final day of discussions on the classroom assistants dispute and, as a previous BBC report noted, a confidentiality clause had been agreed between the sides during those talks. But the BBC are also reporting that “there appears to have been little progress in the pay and job evaluation dispute.” NIPSA meanwhile have organised meetings for their members to be held tomorrow [pdf file] to discuss any new offer.. and, no doubt, whether to resume the strike. Update The talks didn’t last until midnight, and they didn’t reach agreement. Adds Interestingly, in the updated BBC report, the Education minister, no longer “delighted”, is pointing back to the earlier offer of September 28th and the Education Boards representative has described the last two week of talks as being about explaining that offer [added link] - which wasn’t the understanding of the unions going into the talks.. That offer, btw, included an additional one-off payment rather than discussion of the points the Assembly had voted to be on the agenda..

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