112,000 civil servants set to strike

More than 100,000 civil servants are set to land ministers with a headache by staging a 24-hour strike over pay.

The first national industrial action by Whitehall staff for 10 years is being planned by hardliners leading the Public and Commercial Services Union.

An internal memo from PCSU general secretary Mark Serwotka named 10 government departments that could be hit by a mass walk-out affecting up to 112,000 staff.

At the same time, Chancellor Gordon Brown could be hit by fresh opposition over plans to move 20,000 civil servants' jobs outside London.

Up to 30 government departments and agencies could be affected by the controversial move, announced in the Budget this year.

Sir Michael Lyons, who was charged by Mr Brown to review the deployment of government jobs, is to report to the Treasury later this month.

His final conclusions will be made public in November.

But ministers' most pressing concern is likely to be the proposed PCSU walkout. The union's new-look hard-Left executive want a return to national pay bargaining for the civil service, which was scrapped under Margaret Thatcher.

They claim that a series of pay offers, likely to be about 3.7 per cent, will not be enough - particularly for hundreds of thousands of low-grade civil servants whose pay averages £13,250.

The first department to be affected is likely to be the Department of Work and Pensions whose secretary of state, Andrew Smith, is a key Cabinet ally of the Chancellor's. But Mr Serwotka wants to co-ordinate strikes across a range of departments and agencies if they too, as seems likely, face pay disputes.

Today the Treasury denied there were moves to "cap" pay settlements, but stoked up the heat by calling for wage restraint across the public sector to help pay for badly needed improvements to schools, hospitals and transport.

A spokeswoman said: "The Treasury has not called for a limit on civil service pay. There is no truth in this statement.

"Under a 1997 agreement, individual departments take full responsibility for their own pay systems.

"As always, there is a need for responsibility in pay bargaining across the civil service to ensure funding leads directly to the improvement of services."

Meanwhile, thousands of manufacturing workers are being recruited for a demonstration against the Government's economic policies at Labour's annual party conference in Bournemouth next month.

Engineering union Amicus has organised 2,500 marchers - one for each of the jobs in the sector they say will be lost over the conference week - for the day of Mr Brown's speech.

Left-wing general secretary Derek Simpson and his senior officials claim the Government is not doing enough to support manufacturing.

More than 20,000 jobs had been lost in the British aerospace industry since the September 11 terror attacks, they said, compared with only 500 in the rest of Europe.