Unions aim to rally 1m key workers for strike action over pay limits

Unions aim to rally 1m key workers for strike action over pay limits

Around one million key workers - from teachers to immigration officers - are to be asked to take part in a series of strikes from November, reviving the spectre of the "winter of discontent" that brought down the last Labour government 30 years ago.

Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the 300,000-member Public and Commercial Services Union, announced the move yesterday on the eve of the TUC conference.

Three unions - the PCS, the National Union of Teachers and the University and College Union - are due to ballot more than 650,000 people on strike action over Gordon Brown's 2% pay-rise limit for public sector workers. The first two unions have already decided to ballot; the UCU will decide at a conference shortly.

Another 300,000 workers in local government belonging to Unison are already committed to strikes this winter. Other unions could also decide to ballot members when the pay restraint policy is debated today at the congress in Brighton.

Serwotka said the action would be much more intensive than the successful one-day strike back in April - when teachers, civil servants and college lecturers all walked out - and would involve the whole of Whitehall from tax officers to coastguards and jobcentre staff. He accused ministers - who earn between £92,000 and £138,000 a year - of "not having the faintest idea" how low-paid workers coped with food and fuel bills while their pay in departments such as the Home office and the Department.....continued below

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for Work and Pensions went up by between nought and 1%.

The PCS union has produced a YouTube video quoting staff who did not have the money to cope with fuel bills and were in tears after finding they could not afford birthday presents for their children.

Serwotka said: "The government says it is on the side of hard-pressed families, yet compounds the financial misery for hundreds of thousands of hard-working people by pursuing an unjust pay policy.

"The government is out of touch with the people who keep the country running ... peddling the myth that they are the causes of inflation when they see their food, fuel and housing costs soar."

The growing unrest among unions about pay restraint came as Brendan Barber, the TUC general secretary, made it clear that he regarded the government's pay policy as "absolutely wrong-headed".

He is certain to tell Gordon Brown and chancellor Alistair Darling of the strength of union feeling when they come to Brighton tomorrow.

At a press briefing earlier, Barber outlined the TUC's response to the economic turmoil by calling for a package of measures involving tax cuts for the poorest and the abolition of tax privileges for the rich. He insisted the package should be treated not as a "shopping list" but as an "economic strategy" to combat the crisis.

He appealed for the end of "economic masochism", which he defined as trying to choke off external inflation by depressing the domestic economy.

Instead he called for US-style tax cuts for the poor - with further cuts in the basic rate of income tax, cuts in VAT on property renovation and energy and a near doubling of the winter fuel allowance from £250 to £400 per household.