PUBLIC-SECTOR unions vowed a fierce resistance yesterday to any attempt to slash pay, pledging to take further industrial action wherever necessary.

A Unison-sponsored motion calling for “a joint industrial action strategy … co-ordinating strike action among affiliates who are in dispute with their employers over the course of the next year” was passed unanimously by TUC Congress.

The resolution condemned “the government’s punitive public-sector pay and pensions policy.”

Paying tribute to heroic workers at health privateer Care UK, who have been on strike for 50 days this year, Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said: “Our people don’t want to strike.

“But if it’s the only way to get round the table, the only way to be heard, then strike we will.”

An amendment to the motion from the Universities and Colleges Union (UCU) called for an increased focus on women’s economic inequality.

UCU delegate Joanna de Groot said: “Women contribute millions to our economic and social wellbeing.

“Women face a triple whammy of job losses, benefit cuts and reduced services.”

In her annual address to Congress, TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said public-sector workers “won’t take cuts lying down.

“They do a tough job in tough times. The TUC is proud of all our public-sector workers.

“And let me say this: it’s high time this government gave them some respect, as well as the pay rise they deserve.”

But she warned Tories were running scared and would act “just like a dictatorship” to prevent unions from fighting back.

“They set an arbitrary ballot threshold that no other democratic election in Britain is required to meet,” she told delegates in Liverpool yesterday morning.

“Make no mistake, they attempt to ban strikes by the back door.”

She blasted the Con-Dem government for creating a “Downton Abbey-style society” and a “nastier and poorer Britain,” with bosses earning 175 times more than the average worker.

Echoing new Labour minister Peter Mandelson’s infamous comments about the “filthy rich,” she said: “This is a government that appears intensely relaxed about young people stuck in internships and low-paid, dead-end jobs that waste their talents and education.”

Ms O’Grady said the Tories were running scared.

She fired a sharp shot at Employment Minister Esther McVey, who suggested graduates “could be working at Costa” or “run a hotel in Dubai.

“I thought I’d heard it all, I remember when we were told to get on our bikes,” she added. “Being told to jet off to the Middle East — that’s something else entirely!”

Unions across the public sector walked out in co-ordinated strikes on July 10 this year. Unison, Unite and GMB members in local government and schools will walk out again on October 14. 

National Union of Teachers executive members last week voted against joining the day of action, but members will be voting on further strike action shortly.

And the TUC’s Britain Needs a Pay Rise march and rally will take place on October 18.