Union leaders are to use a rare Downing Street meeting with the prime minister to warn of a national walkout by 50,000 public servants over the removal of protective screens in job centres and benefit offices.
Some 2,400 staff are already refusing to go to work at 57 sites including Aberdeen, Bristol, Birmingham, Exeter, London and South Wales after claiming a spate of violent attacks showed they would be in danger if the transparent partitions were taken down.
Officials will raise the increasingly bitter screen dispute alongside pay, staffing levels, pensions and privatisation during today's meeting.
Mark Serwotka, general secretary-elect of PCS, the biggest civil service union, and a former benefits agency receptionist in Sheffield, said: "The lives of civil servants are being put at risk by the removal of these screens."
