by Conrad Landin

and Luke James

CON-DEM ministers were confronted by the consequences of their four-year pay freeze yesterday when they arrived at work to find their own civil servants on strike. 

Workers are in dispute with the government after being offered a rise of only one per cent this year — after years of pay freezes. 

Their stoppage comes ahead of Saturday’s Britain Needs a Pay Rise national demonstration, when hundreds of thousands of workers will take to the streets of London to call time on austerity.

Workplaces that suffered included the Land Registry, where Con-Dem ministers were recently forced to call off privatisation plans after industrial action and embarrassment over the Royal Mail sell-off.

And museum attendants walked out at the National Gallery, where bosses plan to out-source all security and visitor services staff. 

Anti-Shell protesters targeted the first day of the Rembrandt exhibition, which is being sponsored by the oil giant and is the first exhibition in the gallery’s history to be fully staffed by private contractors.

And Ministry of Defence workers in Glasgow were out in full force on picket lines. In Cheshire the Information Commissioner’s helpline was shut down as 200 staff walked out, while all National Museum of Wales sites closed for the day.

Pickets were staged at the doors of every government department, including Chancellor George Osborne’s Treasury.

PCS Treasury branch official Lee Vernon told the Star: “Pay has been cut over years as bills go up and it’s making life harder and harder for the people working on government policy and delivering its services.

“It’s important to be here because ministers have to walk past us and see that their own staff are suffering.”

Staff also walked out of Parliament ahead of the first Prime Minister’s Questions of the session. 

Dianne Green, who would usually have been busy showing visitors around Parliament, was instead telling the public about the pay cut imposed by rich MPs.

“Some MPs do understand the pain it’s causing, but unfortunately the ones in power now obviously do not,” she said.

Left Labour MPs including Katy Clark, Ian Mearns, Grahame Morris, Ian Lavery and John McDonnell boycotted official business and joined staff and PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka outside the Palace of Westminster.