MINISTERS should stop regarding trade unions as “the enemy within” if they wish to improve Britain’s dismal productivity, Unite warned yesterday.

Business Secretary Sajid Javid unveiled the government’s latest productivity plans yesterday, admitting that it now takes a British worker five days to produce what a German worker can deliver in four.

He announced that the government would take action in three areas — transport, planning and education.

But Unite said that chronically low pay was the key factor in Britain sporting the lowest productivity of the G7 leading industrial nations.

“Raising the productivity of UK manufacturing and commerce is one of the big economic challenges of the next decade,” said Unite general secretary Len McCluskey.

“Instead of regarding the trade unions, which have more than six million members, as a stumbling block for productivity progress, they should see unions as ‘partners in productivity’.”