Union leaders demand return to old tactics

Union leaders today demanded a return of Seventies-style flying pickets and secondary strike action.

The Trades Union Congress in Brighton unanimously approved a motion calling for improved employee rights, including "the right of unions to engage in secondary industrial action".

Business leaders warned of a new "winter of discontent".

Ruth Lea, director of policy at the Institute of Directors, said: "I do trust these people realise the image of Britain they are giving.

"I worked for the Invest in Britain Bureau in the 1970s. We battled to improve the image of Britain. The throwback to that situation makes you shudder."

Ms Lea added: "You can almost see a winter of discontent emerging-before your eyes." Susan Anderson, director of human resources policy at the Confederation of British Industry, said it was a "very retrograde step".

But Sir Bill Morris, outgoing leader of the giant Transport and General Workers' Union, said: "We must end the culture of sacking by text messages."

Backing the move for a complete revision of the Employee Relations Act, he added: "British workers need to feel that they are valued, listened to and consulted."

Tony Dubbins, general secretary of the Graphical, Paper and Media Union, said: "We must ensure that this Labour government understands that if they want the support of the working people in the next election they have got to demonstrate their determination to implement real fairness at work right now."

The leader of rail union the RMT, Bob Crow, said the business sector was always calling for partnership with the workforce. "If it is good enough for the bosses to understand what solidarity is, then it should be good enough for us to bring in laws that create secondary action that's legal as well."

And he asked the Government: "Why should you have to wait six months, 12 months, two years to have workers' rights?"

A spokesman for the Department of Trade and Industry said: "We have no plans to review the law on secondary action."

The TUC conference today heard Tony Blair likened to Chairman such permanent revolution." Mr de Gruchy, the former general secretary of the NAS/UWT teaching union, also attacked Mr Blair for promoting unpopular privatisation policies "determined behind closed doors by a cosy coterie of cronies".

These, he said, were "viewed with stunned disbelief by those who have to implement them" and would "never work".

Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith joined in the attack over foundation hospitals, branding government plans "pathetic" as well as "watered down" and "deeply destructive".

Mr Blair had baulked at fullscale reform and was merely "tweaking" the system in a damaging way, he told Radio 4's Today.

The attacks on Mr Blair came on a day when a new poll should have given him some relief from a summer of crisis sparked by the death of weapons expert Dr David Kelly.

Labour's lead in the Populus survey for The Times widened to five points over the Tories, with Labour hitting 39 per cent - up five per cent from early August. The Tories have still seemingly failed to make a breakthrough - a blow for Mr Duncan Smith.