TORY plans to help bosses use agency staff in strikebreaking roles will spark “social unrest” and would be a “recipe for racists,” Unite warned yesterday.

If the Trade Union Bill becomes law companies will be free for the first time to draft in temporary staff to scab on striking workers.

Unite says the move could breed the kind of resentment within workplaces and communities last witnessed during the 1984-85 miners’ strike.

And with most agency workers coming from migrant or ethnic minority backgrounds, the union fears the Bill’s consequences will play into the hands of racists.

Unite’s warning to Tory ministers came in the union’s response to the government’s consultation on the Bill, which closed yesterday.

Union legal director Howard Beckett predicted “splits in the workforce will be enormous” if scabs went on to secure permanent employment.

And he warned: “There will also be civil and social unrest.

“The reality is that agency workers live amongst the communities where employers are based. They live amongst permanent employees.

“Many agency workers will be be migrant workers and that will add to divisions within society.

“Strikebreaking causes civil unrest within communities where both agency and permanent workers live.”

The government’s own impact assessment of the policy acknowledged many agency workers are from minority groups.

It shows temporary agency workers are more likely to be “Asian or black minority ethnic, and less likely to be white.”

When it comes to religion, agency workers are more likely to be “Muslim, and less likely to be no religion.”

In its response, Unite said it will continue to try to safeguard agency workers from exploitation by recruiting them to the union.

But Mr Beckett concluded: “Despite the best efforts of Unite it is inevitable that this legislation will have the potential to lead to social and industrial unrest.”

His comments come as the Bill nears its second reading in Parliament on Monday.

The debate has been scheduled to take place during TUC Congress, just two days after the new Labour leader is elected.

Asked yesterday by the Star if the timing was deliberately antagonistic, a spokeswoman for the Prime Minister said the Bill was being “taken through Parliament in the usual way.”

Chancellor George Osborne described the Bill yesterday as a “long overdue law to protect working people” from the “chaos” of strike action.

But even former Lib Dem business secretary Vince Cable branded the Bill “ideologically driven” and “vindictive,” revealing it was rejected by the Con-Dem coalition.

Unite general secretary Len McCluskey said the government was struggling to find a “shred of support for this shabby Bill.”

He said: “It would seem that the only support for it is around the Conservative Cabinet table, sadly exposing their prejudice and poor understanding about what unions actually do to support working people and improve working conditions.

“Trade unions — and our six million members — are not the ‘enemy within’ but a force for fairness.”

Unite also pointed out in its consultation response that plans to end the ban on agency scabbing would be considered a “serious violation of freedom of association” by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

The Bill would also impose turnout thresholds on strike ballots, also in violation of ILO conventions.

That could leave the government open to a legal challenge even if the Bill passes through Parliament.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) told the Star it would be publishing all consultation responses in the coming weeks.