TUC claims public will back unions over strikes

Union chief Brendan Barber pledged to “win the battle for public support” as public sector workers prepare for a wave of strikes on November 30.

The co-ordinated mass action against plans to reform pensions would cripple a host of front-line services unless talks between union bosses and Ministers succeed.

Addressing the Labour conference in Liverpool, Trades Union Congress (TUC) general secretary Mr Barber said: “I hope we will be able to resolve this dispute through negotiations, and there is still time. But if that proves impossible, then at the end of November an unprecedented array of unions will make common cause in a TUC day of action.”

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He claimed the Government would “try to turn the wider community against the teachers, the nurses, the home-helps and all the other dedicated members of the public service work staff with lies about gold-plated pensions”.

But Mr Barber added: “I am confident that will fail. We will win the battle for public support and we will win fairness.”

He said the links between the trades unions and the Labour Party were as important and strong as ever, but added: “We need to reinvigorate and reinvent the relationship for a new age.”

And he demanded an end to Government cuts, saying: “It is becoming ever clearer that the Government’s austerity agenda is dragging the economy down.”

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Mr Barber appeared to blame social inequality for this summer’s riots, calling for the fight against equality to be Labour’s “defining moment”. He said it would “begin to heal the terrible scars we saw this summer as Britain’s cities burned”.