Twenty-one councils are yet to agree on a deal

Unison's Joe Di Paola wrote to the councils to accept the offer of talks made by Councillor Frank Russell, of local authority umbrella group Cosla.

Eleven of Scotland's councils have agreed a pay deal with nursery nurses in the past few weeks.

Earlier this week, seven more councils indicated they wanted to reach a deal.

'Serious approach'

Mr Di Paola said: "I am saying to these councils, that in the absence of any approach from Cosla, we are happy to sit down with all of them as one separate group to find a Scottish settlement.

"If this is a serious approach and not just an attempt to steal a few headlines, we are happy to meet them and try to settle this dispute.

"However, if this is simply a PR exercise, I don't think the parents whose kids have had their education disrupted will be too impressed."

Unison's chair of negotiators, Angela Lynes, said: "We want to talk to them about what local deals they were going to match.

"After all, there have been 11 separate deals and more offers. If they can all find the money for 'broadly similar deals' then we want to know what this would be broadly similar to."

The wish to at least engage in discussions at council level is clearly welcomed as a step in the right direction from Unison Cosla spokesman

Cosla insisted that the council leaders have not set themselves up as a separate group from the organisation but were acting in good faith to end the dispute.

A spokesman for Cosla said: "It is this sort of behaviour from Unison that must be driving the parents and children affected crazy."

"We could not make our position any clearer - local discussion is the only forward, and when we invited them to talk it was obviously to get them round the table on an individual basis to discuss each council's specific proposals.

"However the wish to at least engage in discussions at council level is clearly welcomed as a step in the right direction from Unison."

Unison and the local government umbrella group, Cosla, have been at loggerheads since 2003 over current pay and conditions.

At present nursery nurses earn about �13,000 a year but they want an extra �4,000 to reflect additional duties they have had to undertake.