Ninety dinner ladies across York and North Yorkshire have won up to £200,000 after a six-year "battle for justice" over equal pay.

The school meals staff will receive the back-pay under a settlement agreed yesterday between their union UNISON, private catering contractors Castleview Services and North Yorkshire County Council.

The union said individual employees, many of whom are from York and Malton, would receive between a few hundred pounds and about £2,800, depending on their length of service and hours worked.

Jubilant Maxine Ross, school meals convenor for the union in North Yorkshire, who has been at the forefront of the back-pay campaign, said: "This is a great day for us. It has been a very long battle but justice has been done.

"It shows that if you believe in the justice of your cause and you stick to the task, you will triumph," she said.

The settlement was agreed after several hours of behind-the-scenes discussions between the three parties in Leeds, where a four-day employment tribunal hearing had been due to start yesterday. The test-case brought by Unison was due to involve two York staff - Archbishop Holgate School catering assistant Pauline Barker and St Oswald's School cook Barbara Powell.

Pauline said afterwards she expected to receive about £1,250 in back-pay, while Barbara said her pay-out might come to about £2,000.

The total amount is not yet known, although Unison said it believed it would be around £200,000 while Castleview thought it might total about £150,000.

Castleview said it would be responsible for paying out to about 50 dinner ladies, with the county council paying the other 40. But it is understood that the council will seek to recoup its payments from Castleview.

Castleview director of human resources, Hugh Owens, said: "We are pleased we have been able to settle with employees."

He stressed that while Castleview was satisfied staff were receiving what they were entitled to, it had not made any admission of liability.

The case related to a House of Lords legal ruling in 1995 over equal pay for dinner ladies, under which 1,300 dinner ladies sacked by the council in 1991 were awarded compensation after being re-employed by council caterers on lower wages, fewer holidays and less sick pay than men in similar positions.

Unison has claimed since 1996 that Castleview imposed unfair pay and conditions on staff after winning school meal contracts. It claimed that Castleview employees were getting poorer pay compared to staff employed by North Yorkshire County Caterers, and alleged that this contravened the House of Lords' ruling.

Unison claimed yesterday that Castleview had failed to meet the legal requirements of the Transfer of Undertakings Protection of Employment (TUPE) regulations.

It also claimed Castleview had been paid £250,000 by the council to honour the terms and conditions of staff when it took over the meals contract, but that the company then kept money which rightly belonged to staff.

A council spokesman said today the authority had only been involved in the case because some former Castleview employees had gone back to work for it, and under TUPE regulations, it now had responsibility for them.

He said the House of Lords judgment had been taken into account by the authority when the catering contract had originally been let to Castleview.

He said Castleview had accepted the need to pay the higher rate of pay, and the county council had accepted the need to review the contract price. "But under privatisation legislation, the council could not ask Castleview about the terms and conditions it was paying to its staff."

Updated: 11:12 Wednesday, June 27, 2001