TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber is expected to focus this week’s TUC conference on government spending cuts and the possibility of mass strike action unless there is a serious rethink in Government policy on spending cuts and pensions reform.
Unite, which represents 1.5 million workers, is calling for strikes and civil disobedience to fight cuts. Mr Barber has agreed that there is a strong chance of industrial action unless there is movement in talks over the proposed increases to public sector workers’ pension contributions.
In his opening address to delegates at the conference, Mr Barber will call for a ‘movement for the alternative’ as the Coalition Government ‘has set the cruel and mistaken objective of getting rid of the deficit in just four years’.
He is expected to say the cuts have “hit middle and low-income workers in both private and public sectors and have hardly been noticed by those who did so well out of the banking bubble”.
He will add: “The less you had to do with causing the crash, the bigger the price you are having to pay.”
Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has ruled out any change on the deficit reduction programme.