Unison's 600,000 public sector workers are "fed up and angry that they are expected to accept pay cut after pay cut, while bread and butter prices go through the roof." They have voted to strike, but will they be supported?
"Well done", says blogger e10rifles on Labour home. "It is heartening for those of us in other parts of the public sector to see the largest group taking the initiative in fighting Brown's enforced pay cuts." The post predicts that other unions, including Unite and the NUT, could join in.
"See you on the picket line, comrades," the post says.
Housing worker John McDermott will be there. He's angry with Alistair Darling's repeated calls for pay restraint, and says the vote is a sign "that workers across both the public and private sector are fed up with below inflation pay rises. The Shell tanker drivers have recently shown what can be achieved in the private sector with a 14% pay deal over 2 years."
But school caretakers aren't so sure, and have been muttering about their doubts on the forum of the caretakers website. Many are concerned that the other big public sector union, the GMB, won't be joining in. A head carektaker from Norwich says he won't be joining in. "The whole thing is pointless without the backing off the GMB," says the post.
"I can't afford a sustained strike," says Bazza2764, a senior caretaker at a school in Northumberland.
The Spectator's business blog gives tips to the government on how to win the PR campaign against Unison. "Only 27% voted and of them only 55% agreed to walk out. So in total only about 1 in 8 actually voted for a strike, making the union's claim that it was 'solid vote for action' questionable."
The squeaky clean Daily Mail has become so neurotic about household waste and its timely removal that its first thought about the strike is the prospect of piles of rotting bin bags.
"Council workers are threatening a summer of strikes that will leave rubbish uncollected and schools shut," is the top line on its lead story.
It reprints pictures of bin bags mounting up in Leicester Square during a similar strike in 2002, and reminds us of the rotting waste during the Winter of Discontent at the end of 1970s.
You might think the Mail would be prepared to pay any price to avoid a repeat of similar scenes. But it says that public sector workers have enjoyed an "11-year bonanza under New Labour" and that Gordon Brown should resist their pay demands.
"Has he the nerve to take on the unions and win? Or is he doomed to go the same ways as Jim Callaghan 30 years ago?" it asks.
The Sun says the council workers are "out of order".
This is an edited extract from the Wrap, our digest of the daily papers.
