Trade union leaders back co-ordinated action over pay as cost of living crisis escalates

Move would stop short of general strike

Trade union leaders have backed co-ordinated action over pay as the UK’s cost of living crisis escalates.

Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), said: “It always makes sense for working people to work together”.

The UK’s largest two unions are seeking to co-ordinate industrial action as they step up pay demands this winter.

Next month’s TUC meeting looks set to see a series of motions calling for unions to work together to increase wages in the face of soaring inflation. The move would stop short of a "general strike".

A motion by the Unite union calls for help to "facilitate and encourage industrial co-ordination between unions so that workers in dispute can most effectively harness their union power to win".

It also reads: "Congress recognises the need for unions to focus on collective action and industrial power to best represent and advance the interests of workers. The collective is the real power of the trade union movement."

It comes after weeks of declining relations between the government and trade unions.

The governor of the Bank of England has urged wage restraint in a bid to avoid worsening the country’s inflation crisis.

But that call was rejected by Ms O’Grady, who said it was energy prices not salaries fuelling spiralling inflation.

She also warned ministers there was “real public sympathy” for industrial action.

People “just want their wages to keep up with the cost of living,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Paying workers more would be good for the economy, she suggested. Businesses are concerned that if wages are cut people will not have money to spend locally, she said.

She also said her organisation had not met the chancellor, despite the crisis, as she expressed surprise he is visiting the US in what is widely expected to be his last week in the job.

The UK could be hit by a series of strikes this winter, as workers battle to avoid a real terms cut to their wages.

Already more than 110,000 posties are striking calling for a “dignified, proper pay rise”. Next month around 160,000 civil servants will be balloted for strike action over pay, pensions, jobs and redundancy terms.

Experts now predict that inflation could reach as high as 22 per cent at the start of next year, hammering the value of worker’s pay packets. At the same time soaring energy and food prices mean millions are forecast to have to spend thousands extra this winter to heat their homes and feed their families.