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'Summer of strikes' warning on eve of poll
Dick Murray, Transport Editor21 May 2008
Unions today warned of a wave of summer strikes in a major blow to Gordon Brown the day before the Crewe by-election.
A string of public sector unions, including hundreds of thousands of civil servants, firefighters, teachers and college lecturers, revealed plans for a summer campaign of industrial action in protest over pay and jobs.
Mr Brown was told to "hang his head in shame" over his plans to axe thousands more civil service jobs, by Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the powerful Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union.
The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) at the opening of its conference in Southport also warned of yet more walkouts by firefighters - again over pay.
Leaders of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) were meeting later today and tomorrow to plan further industrial action.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith was berated by Police Federation chairman Jan Berry, leader of rank-and-file police officers, of "betraying" the service over pay as the two women shared a stage at the federation's conference in Bournemouth. Ms Berry also ridiculed Ms Smith's admission that she took cannabis in her youth, saying: "Your recent crimes have been more for the serious fraud office than the drug squad." The outgoing chair accused Ms Smith of making a "monumental-mistake" over her refusal to backdate officers' pay awards.
But Ms Smith told more than 1,000 members: "I stand by my decision. But it was one that I took only after a lot of thought - after considering the full facts of the case." She added that lobbying for the right to strike "will only lead to a dead end".
The PCS, at its annual conference at Brighton, launched a new strike ballot among 280,000 civil servants in protest over the Government's twoper-cent pay limit. More than 1,000 PCS delegates voted to back the action.
In an attack on the Prime Minister Mr Serwotka said: "The treatment we have received at the hands of this Government is an absolute disgrace... more privatisation under this Government than the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major combined. We should condemn those politicians, particularly Gordon Brown, who use the Civil Service as a political football and he should hang his head in shame."
College lecturers in London are to stage a 24-hour strike on 9 June unless a 2.9 per cent pay offer is increased, warned the University and College Union today.
Mr Serwotka told PCS delegates the union is to ballot members in 200 Government departments over a programme of industrial action including a national one-day civil service strike. "Pay in the civil service is among the lowest in the public sector with a quarter earning less than £16,000 on the minimum wage," he said.
