Reuters Britain faces its biggest strike in 30 years next week, a one-day walkout over public-sector pensions, with the prime minister urging parents to take their children to work as schools close and diplomats being flown home to staff border controls. The action will test whether once-mighty trades unions, hamstrung by strict labor laws and a shrinking membership, can still have an influence on policy. After months of heated negotiations which have gone nowhere, about two million public sector workers are to strike on Nov. 30 over austerity measures by the Conservative-led coalition government that will make them pay more for their pensions and work for longer before they can retire. Ministers are so concerned about the impact they are calling some embassy staff home to stand in for striking immigration officers. The strike is expected to close thousands of schools, cause chaos to ports and airports, and disrupt services as diverse as refuse and tax collection. A report that pay for directors of Britain's top 100 companies rose 49 percent last year has added to the sense of outrage amongst the low-paid, many of whom work in the public sector. The government says the strike could lead to job losses and cost more than half a billion pounds in lost output, a figure the Trades Union Congress (TUC), an umbrella group coordinating the walkout by 30 unions, dismissed as “fantasy economics”. Unions, many of whom have saved up a “war chest” of funds to pay striking workers, say it is the first in a wave of national one-day strikes running into next year, challenging a government that is trying to juggle cutting a budget deficit that peaked at a record 11 percent of economic output with fostering growth. “If there is a big turnout next week and the government digs in there will definitely be more strikes, I can't see them (unions) stopping,” said Roger Seifert, professor of industrial relations at Wolverhampton University. “The mood is hardening, the government isn't helping and people look across the English Channel (to Europe) and think ‘we need to do something'; the mood is very grim and pretty determined,” said Seifert. So far, Britain has avoided the large-scale strikes and protests seen in other European countries including Greece, France, Portugal, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Serbia over austerity plans and cuts to pensions. Despite the big numbers likely to be involved, commentators say the strike does not herald a return to the late 1970s and the 1980s when rubbish piled up in the streets and labor disputes came to define an era when Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher took on the unions and won. Analysts also point out unions no longer have the power they once had, partly because of declining membership but also the strict labor laws introduced by Thatcher's government. Britain has some of the most restrictive strike laws in the Western world and analysts say such rules could put unions off from taking more action despite many threatening to call more nationwide walkouts well into next year if the government fails to negotiate over pensions. __
