The women involved in the claim brought by public sector union Unison also include home care workers, cleaners and cooks. They contended that their basic rate of pay was less than that of men doing comparable jobs.
Around 20 teaching assistants and eight nursery nurses with NNEB qualifications will now earn bonus payments in line with men in comparable jobs following the ruling by a Manchester tribunal.
It means that a nursery nurse with an NNEB who was earning just under £16,000 in 2008, whose job was then compared to a male worker on the same terms and conditions, is now eligible for bonus payments of between 33.3 and 50 per cent.
Bury Metropolitan Borough Council had been paying weekly bonuses of between 33.3 per cent and 50 per cent to male workers including refuse collectors, labourers and gardeners. It argued that bonuses were worth paying because they increased productivity.
After a four-week hearing, the council's argument that men were paid more because of a genuine material factor, rather than because of the workers' sex, was rejected by the tribunal.
Keith Westley, regional officer north-west, equal pay unit of Unison, told Nursery World, 'The judgement from the tribunal said that the bonuses were a sham, because measuring what people did and linking it to productivity had been abandoned and worksheets were no longer completed. It's about correcting historic pay differences and rectifying what happened in the past.'
Mr Westley said that the union hoped that the council would now make out-of-court settlements to the women.
The pay claim covers a number of grades and goes across different teaching assistant levels.
Claims are to be backdated from six years prior to 31 March 2007.
