Civil servants balloted over strike

The Government is facing the threat of a fresh wave of strikes by public sector workers in a series of disputes over pay involving civil servants, college lecturers and firefighters.

The warning followed a decision by the Public and Commercial Services Union to ballot 280,000 civil servants for industrial action in protest at the low inflation pay deals.

The union's general secretary, Mark Serwotka, bitterly attacked the prime minister, saying Gordon Brown should "hang his head in shame" at the way civil servants were being treated.

He told his union's annual conference in Brighton that Labour came to power in 1997 under the slogan "things can only get better", but, for civil servants hit by job losses and pay cuts, things had got worse.

"The treatment we have received at the hands of this Government is an absolute disgrace - more privatisation than under Margaret Thatcher and John Major combined."

Mr Serwotka continued: "We are faced with a government and a Prime Minister who has said he wants to reduce the size of the civil service to its 1945 level - a time of rationing and hardship when the country only had a minimal welfare state.

"What a miserable statement from a miserable prime minister who, in his desperation to avoid the humiliation of defeat at the hands of a bunch of lacklustre Tories, apes their policies in a pathetic attempt to sound tough."

The 1,000 delegates agreed to ballot civil servants across 200 government departments and other agencies for a programme of rolling industrial action, including a national one-day strike as well as bans on overtime and other working to rule.

Delegates also pressed for industrial action to be coordinated with other public-sector unions following last month's walk-out by hundreds of thousands of teachers, lecturers and civil servants - the biggest stoppage over pay in the public sector for a decade.

Mr Serwotka said after the vote: "At a time when the Labour Government is at its least popular, they are further alienating their own workforce with a policy of pay freezes and pay cuts."