Teachers threaten strike over pay

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The National Union of Teachers, representing 260,000 classroom staff, condemned the Chancellor for seeking to cap pay rises for public sector workers at 2%.

Delegates at the NUT's annual conference in Harrogate unanimously backed a motion ordering preparations for a one-day walkout as "the first stage" in a campaign to force Mr Brown to reconsider.

Martin Reed, who proposed the motion on behalf of the NUT's ruling executive, said: "Gordon Brown has announced a blueprint for public sector savings, savings provided by squeezing the pockets of public sector workers.

"Be in no doubt, it will be a policy of pay restrictions which he will seek to impose. This is the greatest challenge we have faced for decades. We will fight together with the TUC and our own colleagues throughout the country. We will make that fight a battle we intend to win."

Delegates claimed the Chancellor was more interested in helping bankers get rich with vast bonuses than teachers buy a first home and warned that securing fair pay must come before any attempt to establish good relations with a future Brown government.

The NUT resolved to unite with other teachers' groups and public service unions to oppose the Government's target for limiting their pay.

Nurses and midwives have already condemned plans to give them what unions have said amounts to a rise of less than 2% a year, while the armed forces receive up to 9% under Mr Brown's proposals.

The motion passed by every delegate in the conference hall raised the prospect of "joint industrial action" across the public services as part of the campaign.

It stated that the NUT should "prepare to ballot members for a national one-day strike in co-operation with other teachers' organisations and public sector unions as the first stage of any industrial action which is required to protect the pay of teachers and of other public sector workers".