The capital faces a paralysing one-day strike by refuse collectors, school staff and street cleaners as local government workers launch a fresh campaign of stoppages to support their claim for higher London pay weighting.
Talks aimed at averting the industrial action broke down today, with the council employers making no new offer and the unions promising an all-out, one-day strike on October 1.
The action is timed to disrupt Tony Blair's keynote speech to Labour's annual conference in Blackpool, and the unions are considering setting up pickets outside the town's Winter Gardens conference centre.
The all-out strike will be followed by longer-term selective action as the unions target council tax collection services as well as bin collection, parking services and street cleaning.
Geoff Martin, Unison's London convenor, said: "We're going to hit them where they get their money and in high profile services that no one can ignore. We're going to drag them kicking and screaming back to the bargaining table."
The dispute centres on a claim from the three big town hall unions - Unison, the transport and General, and the GMB - for a major increase in London weighting.
They want the wage supplement, paid to recognise the higher costs of living in the capital, to rise to £4,000 - at a cost of up to £2,600 per employee.
But the capital's town halls say they simply cannot afford to meet the cost of such a large wage-hike, which they claim will cost £250m and mean service cuts, redundancies or hefty increases in the council tax.
Speaking for the Association of London Government, Ann John said that the London boroughs were already struggling to meet the costs of a national pay deal that will bring pay rises of up to 11% for the poorest paid employees over two years.
That deal, she said, would add 4% to the London pay premium as well as boosting the pay of the worst-off.
In a statement following the talks, she added: "After a full discussion the employers' side agreed that they find it challenging to meet the national award and therefore cannot afford to pay anything more than that."
The national pay deal was secured by the unions only after they had staged a one-day strike that covered England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is still out for consultation, and both the unions and council bosses will announce later this month whether their members have accepted.
