Unions set to call for mass public sector strikes

Forget the heckling, the cries of  “shame” and “stand up for us” from union members to Ed Miliband.  Instead, expect a major development in Britain’s politics and economy on Wednesday.

As I have long suspected, the three union giants – Unison, Unite and the GMB – will use the TUC pension debate to call for the closest thing Britain has seen to a general strike in decades, a ballot for rolling strikes against the coalition government’s public sector pension reforms.

I I have heard from two union bosses and three union officials who have all confirmed that backroom negotiations are ongoing to coordinate “multi-day” strikes with maximum impact that could see key public services out of action “for weeks”.

The announcements will mark the first time that the big three unions will have balloted for strike action over controversial reforms to public sector pensions. The big three will join smaller unions for teachers and the PCS that have already won ballots for strikes.

In total, three to four million workers could be on strike, but their impact would be magnified by staging the strikes over a period of weeks, disrupting schools, universities, and hospitals.

Of all the government’s policies, public sector pensions is the one area where a national strike would be legal under the Thatcher-era anti-union laws.

As I mentioned at the last TUC conference in Manchester last year, David Cameron’s then union-link man, Richard Balfe, had been warning Number 10 that this was the area for compromise and negotiation.

It seems that union leaders who have attended the two-hour negotiation sessions with Chief Secretary Danny Alexander are convinced that they are going nowhere.

One union figure told me that the purpose of the strikes would be to “disrupt”, to force the government in to “proper negotiations”. It might be called an Autumn of Discontent.

But “discontent” does not adequately convey the sense of fury and anger at having to pay a three per cent extra tax for palpably worse pensions at a time of already declining living standards, particularly when the government’s own reports from the OBR and Lord Hutton show that the cost of public pensions to the public purse are declining over the next 50 years.  Watch this space.

Follow Faisal Islam on Twitter @faisalislam