British unions chief warns against spending cuts

September 14, 2009 07:21:48 AM

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Britain's trade unions leader warned on Sunday that government cuts in spending on key public services would cause a second wave of recession, scarring young people for life.

"Public spending cuts will provoke a double-quick, double-dip recession," Brendan Barber said on the eve of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) annual conference being held in the port city of Liverpool, northwest England.

"Unemployment could well exceed four million (in Britain) and it would take many years before there was any chance of returning to anything like full employment," said Barber, the TUC general secretary.

"That would scar for life a whole generation of young people."

The TUC brings together more than 50 unions representing about six million mostly public-sector workers.

Top of the agenda at the TUC's conference starting Monday is convincing its key ally, the Labour Party-run government, to avoid cutting public spending to tackle a ballooning budget deficit caused by recession.

Barber said the government could instead save money by scrapping controversial nuclear defence and identity card projects and by extending its programme of imposing higher taxes on the wealthy.

Britain has yet to follow France, Germany and Japan out of recession in the wake of the financial crisis, as the number of unemployed people in the country heads towards three million.

Britain's Business Secretary Peter Mandelson was on Monday to deliver a tough message on public spending in a speech to the think-tank Progress.

According to Britain's domestic Press Association news agency, Mandelson was to warn of "less spending in some programmes" and to admit that some government projects may have to be scrapped.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown was meanwhile set to tell union delegates in Liverpool on Tuesday that the government has "to make tough choices in public spending", according to extracts from his speech leaked to media.

Britain's unions face a tough future as recession threatens to cut public spending on key services such as schools and hospitals.

Furthermore, the governing centre-left Labour Party is on course to be defeated by the main opposition centre-right Conservatives, opinion polls show, at the upcoming general election.

The nation's unions provide the bulk of funding for the Labour Party and fear for their future should the Conservatives win the election, which must be held by mid-2010.

Former Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher had famously crushed the unions' power during the 1980s.

On Friday, Brown hosted union leaders for private talks, described by The Times newspaper as "a charm offensive... to pacify Labour's disgruntled trade union paymasters, who are warning that the party may already have lost the next election".

Brown's office said the talks had been "constructive".

Steve French, senior lecturer on industrial relations at Keele University, said: "There is a general feeling that Labour will be defeated (at the next election) and there's clearly a lot of uncertainty about what the future will be for public sector finances.

"If public finances become the centre of government policy, this will be an area where there's going to be lots of tensions (with unions), irrespective almost of the government of the day," French told AFP.