The FINANCIAL — Union leaders are being warned they are ‘playing with fire' as they prepare to close nine in ten schools, cancel thousands of NHS operations and cause gridlock in Britain's ports and airports.
Senior ministers say unions have ‘no mandate' to bring the country to its knees and are threatening to tighten strike law to prevent future industrial action being triggered by the small numbers of workers who take part in ballots.
Prime Minister David Cameron, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude and senior officials held crisis talks in Downing Street on Friday to prepare for next Wednesday's strike over planned changes to public sector pensions, which is expected to be the biggest in Britain for many years.
Ministers are writing to millions of individual public sector workers pointing out that proposed reforms to their pensions will leave many of them better off in retirement and urging them to break the strike.
As Britain braces itself for widespread chaos when workers stage nationwide walkouts on Wednesday, it emerged that: Up to nine in ten schools could be forced to close their doors, affecting millions of families; transport chiefs warned major airports will be gridlocked, with queues of up to 12 hours and delayed flights; up 5,500 NHS operations and 12,000 diagnostic tests are expected to be postponed; millions of householders will face delays in bin collections; Downing Street was unable to rule out closing Britain's borders.
They are incandescent that despite months of negotiations, and several major concessions over proposed reforms to cut the cost of public sector pensions, union leaders have decided to stage a walkout which could cost the flatlining economy as much as £500million.
Turnouts in strike ballots have been extraordinarily low, with as few as 25 per cent of workers taking part, and ministers now say the case for tightening the law to make it harder to conduct a legal strike is ‘pressing'.
Maude is also considering changing legislation requiring unions to take action within 28 days of a ballot or lose the mandate for further strike action."These strikes are happening on very poor turnouts," said one senior Government source. "Union leaders hardly have a ringing endorsement from their members for very disruptive strikes and encouraging people to lose a day's pay.
"The case for changing the law becomes harder to resist if they behave so irresponsibly. They are playing with fire." Downing Street staff were among those asked yesterday to volunteer for two days of training that will enable them to volunteer to operate passport checks on Wednesday.
Labour leader Ed Miliband, who defeated his brother David in the party's leadership contest thanks only to the votes of the unions, is under mounting pressure to denounce next week's strikes.
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