NUMBER 10 Downing Street is to be hit by strike action for the first time in nearly 40 years as gardening and maintenance workers down trowels over pay.

Members of general union GMB who also tend central London’s royal parks will strike on May 26 in anger at profiteer OCS’s changes to pay agreements and to demand the £9.15 living wage.

Grievances include a switch from weekly to monthly pay without agreement and the withholding of two weeks’ pay until workers leave the company. GMB said the vote for strike action was overwhelming.

“It is OCS trampling on their legal rights that has led these Royal Park staff to vote overwhelmingly to strike,” said GMB regional officer Gary Carter.

“This decision has not been taken lightly and will be the first strike in Royal Parks since 1978.”

Protests will be staged outside Number 10 at 10.30am and pickets will be in action from 6am at Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens and St James’s Park.

But the reddest face may not be PM David Cameron’s, but the Queen’s.

The strike is one day before the state opening of Parliament, when Elizabeth Mountbatten-Windsor will travel past the unkempt bedding outside Buckingham Palace on her way to the Palace of Westminster.

Mr Carter said that his members’ jobs, conditions and wages were supposed to be protected by legislation after OCS won a new, seven-year contract for the work, but that they had come under attack by the firm.

Jobs including landscape maintenance, horticulture, litter-picking, refuse collection, road and path sweeping, cleansing, gritting, playground inspection and grave digging at Brompton Cemetery are all in the firing line.

“Employment relations have been good down the years, but since OCS took over the contract in August 2014, staff morale has rapidly deteriorated because of repeated attempts to worsen their pay and conditions,” said Mr Carter.

“Now OCS wants to hold back two weeks’ pay our members have already earned, which will put these lower paid staff into debt.

“The staff and gardeners are proud of the work they do which is admired by Londoners and by visitors from all around the world. They deserve to be treated with decency and respect.”

The Morning Star spoke to 10 Downing Street to ask for a comment, but none was forthcoming at the time of going to press.