THE government has no plan for growth, wages or public services, TUC general secretary Paul Nowak has said.

He told the annual conference of Yorkshire and the Humber TUC yesterday that while workers were suffering the cost-of-living crisis the salaries of chief executives rose by 33 per cent in the last year — following a 29 per cent increase the year before – and bonuses in the City of London reached a record £18 million.

Mr Nowak was in Sheffield after attending a demonstration in the port of Hull marking the first anniversary of the unlawful sacking of nearly 800 P&O ferry workers.

“Instead of a multi-million pound fine, the government has done absolutely nothing to prevent another P&O,” he said.

He said the conference was taking place at an “incredibly important time” and that the response of trade unions to government intransigence, with hundreds of thousands of members taking strike action, was “absolutely fantastic,” forcing the government to negotiate.

Mr Nowak said that strike action had successfully forced employers in the private sector to make settlements – a 13 per cent increase in wages at Fox’s biscuits in Batley in West Yorkshire, 16 per cent won by workers at Drax power station in North Yorkshire and 20 per cent for bus workers in Hull.

But he warned: “We live in a country where more than a quarter of hospitals have set up food banks for their staff, where firefighters cannot afford to put fuel in their cars, where a quarter of the people in Yorkshire are living in poverty.”

He said the trade union movement must grow if change was to be achieved.

“We have to fight for it,” he said.