Leaders of the Fire Brigades Union are to meet next Tuesday to discuss strikes of up to eight days after representatives from every UK service yesterday voted 51,849-0 to hold a ballot on industrial action over a 40% pay claim.
The first national walkout for 25 years is to be pencilled in from the end of October with the FBU executive now confident of a "yes" result in the postal ballot of crews in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The looming confrontation is the most serious industrial threat to Tony Blair since 1997. Concerned ministers, preparing to deploy troops in vintage Green Goddesses to provide emergency cover, were dismayed at the strength of opposition at the special union conference in Manchester. The card vote saw delegates from all 58 brigades supporting the ballot.
The postal ballot is to be held between September 27 and October 18 and the FBU executive will next week consider tactics, with a wave of strikes lasting from a few hours to two, four or eight days among the options.
Andy Gilchrist, FBU general secretary, said the strikes would be called with "purpose" and, after months of failed negotiations, the union would boycott a government inquiry announced last week in an attempt to stall stoppages.
"We have reached the end of our patience," Mr Gilchrist said. "The action we take, if we are forced, will reflect the mood and confidence that we saw in the conference."
The fire service minister, Nick Raynsford, urged the union to reconsider as Sir Jeremy Beecham, the spokesman for the employers, denounced the action as "irresponsible" and dismissed as "unreasonable" a pay claim that would put firefighters on £30,000 a year.
The "hit and run" tactics favoured by the FBU, striking then returning to work, then striking again, have been used successfully by the union in local disputes in Merseyside, Derbyshire and Essex, where military cover was stretched and proved expensive.
With the army able to crew a maximum 900 ageing Green Goddesses in place of 3,000 modern civilian appliances, underground transport links such as the Channel Tunnel and London Tube could be closed; rail workers are threatening separate strike ballots.
Firefighters last went on strike nationally in the winter of 1977-78 when Green Goddesses answered calls for nine weeks. Since rejecting a 4% offer, union leaders have accused ministers of blocking a proposed 16% offer from local employers that would have pushed earnings up to £25,000 a year from the current £21,531.
Independent research commissioned by the FBU calculates that 41p a week would be added to the average council tax bill if the 40% claim was met in full and the union said many qualified staff with families relied on benefits and second jobs.
The local authority employers, reliant on Whitehall for much of their funding, cost the claim at more than £400m and Tony Blair has warned that it could result in interest rates going up.
Mr Raynsford said the union should take part in its inquiry into pay and conditions in the fire service under Professor George Bain, former chairman of the low pay commission.
· The government yesterday rejected as "unrealistic" a 10% pay claim from members of the National Union of Teachers in England and Wales, writes Rebecca Smithers .
The NUT, Britain's biggest classroom union said a 10% or a £2,000 boost - whichever was larger - was needed to ensure that teachers stayed in the classroom.
Its general secretary Doug McAvoy said: "New Labour came to power with education, education, education at the centre of its manifesto. Yet teachers' pay compared with average earnings has continued on a downward spiral. Indeed, since 1992, teachers' pay has declined by 10 points against average earnings."
Eamonn O'Kane, general secretary of the NASUWT, said there was an "irrefutable need for substantial increases" although he did not put a figure on a rise.
He warned that his union would be under "irresistible pressure" to take industrial action unless the government boosted teachers' pay and cut their hours.
