Great Britain: unions could mobilize against the government’s austerity policy

The political temperature of the union battle against the government’s austerity programme moved up several notches at the annual gathering of the Trades Union Congress. Prior to it, the general secretary of the largest union, Unite, predicted a winter of discontent and strikes over the effects of government pay policy. Then, leaders of Unison and the GMB unions, representing 2m workers, stated their intention to ballot their members over a pay freeze in the public sector, with strikes due in early 2013 if the government did not back down on maintain a cap of 1% on pay increases.