DINNER-LADY strikes in Cádiz, Teruel and Zaragoza means school canteens are shut across both regions and parents are having to take time off work to pick their kids up at lunchtime.

Many dinner ladies have not been paid in months and their working conditions are increasingly poorer because of funding cuts in education.

Although in most cases, parents have been given plenty of notice, in some schools, mums and dads have received a call at lunchtime to collect their children as they have nowhere they can sit and eat, and no school dinners being served.

Some parents are taking in four or five other children for lunch because their parents' shifts do not allow them to pick them up or, in certain cases where pupils travel to school on the bus and their mums and dads do not have cars, they are unable to get there at all.

Parents, teachers, headmasters and headmistresses have been taking it in turns to oversee the children at midday, often meaning they have to keep an eye on between 200 and 300 kids at once single-handedly.

In the province of Cádiz, the company which has the franchise for providing lunch and supervisory staff to 55 schools is being sued by the regional education authorities.

The firm also supplies school transport, but bus drivers have been on strike as well as kitchen and canteen staff because they have not been paid in three months.

But the regional education authorities say they are fully up to date with their invoices and that it is the franchise company itself which has not been paying its staff.

Andalucía has around 1,500 school canteens which are managed by 40 franchise companies, and all bar the ones in Cádiz under Brassica Group are running as normal, says the regional government.