Britain’s trade unions voted overwhelmingly to back rare coordinated strikes as they were urged to “stand up and fight” government austerity cuts at their congress yesterday.
The opening session of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) was dominated by angry attacks on Prime Minister David Cameron’s coalition, which took power in May and plans deep public sector cuts to tackle a record deficit.
Mr Cameron leads a “demolition government” which will make Britain a “darker, brutish, more frightening place,” TUC chief Brendan Barber said, as delegates backed joint industrial action and a national campaign to argue against cuts.
Bob Crow, the firebrand leader of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers Union (RMT) which represents around 80,000 people, spoke for strikes, saying the unions would be “fools not to call major action”.
“If we stand together, we fight and win and if we don’t fight and we become divided, we lose,” he told the audience in Manchester, to loud applause.
“The position’s going to be either lay down, or stand up and fight.”
On Sunday, Mr Crow – whose union helped bring London to a standstill last week with a 24-hour strike on Underground trains – proposed a peaceful campaign of civil disobedience which could involve protesters dressed as “Batman climbing up Number 10 (Downing Street)... Spiderman going up Buckingham Palace.”
Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), said industrial action looked “inevitable”. And Matt Wrack of the Fire Brigades Union promised a movement against the cuts “on a scale you’ve never seen before”.
Meanwhile later yesterday Unions at the BBC called for two 48-hour strikes to coincide with major domestic news events next month in protest at changes to employees’ pensions at the broadcaster.
Journalists, technicians and broadcast staff have been asked to strike on October 5-6, when the ruling Conservative Party holds its party conference, and again on October 19-20, when the government announces public spending cuts.
The action was announced by three unions – Bectu, the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) and Unite – even though the BBC has offered a new concession in an attempt to avert strikes.
Unions will consult with their members over the next few weeks before meeting on October 1 to decide whether to go ahead with the strikes.
Under the latest pension proposal from the BBC, pensions would be based on average pay over a career and the BBC would not put an annual one-per cent cap on growth of pensionable pay.
However, employees would have to work longer, to the age of 65 rather than 60, and would have to pay a greater proportion of their salary into a pension pot.
Jeremy Dear, NUJ general secretary, said BBC employees were being asked “to pay much more for significantly worse benefits”.
“If the BBC fails to listen to the continued anger of staff at these unacceptable pensions changes, we will be left with no choice but to strike to stop the pensions robbery,” he said. The TUC is already set to lobby Parliament next month and hold a day of action in March, but the vote signals an intention to act on a grander scale.