THE trade union movement faces a “pivotal moment” in its history, the leader of Civil Service union PCS told the annual conference of Northern region of the TUC on Saturday.

Fran Heathcote said that after suffering austerity, the cost-of-living crisis and now recession, it was no wonder that workers had been taking strike action which had prompted the government to enact its strike-breaking Minimum Service Levels legislation.

“It is nothing to do with protecting public services, but with attacking the right to strike,” the union general secretary said.

She said PCS members working for the government’s Border Force immigration control operations were likely to face the anti-strike laws after voting for strike action.

“The impact on our members will be unprecedented,” she said. “But we will not shy away from it.”

PCS is among unions mounting a legal challenge to the legislation.

More than 150,000 PCS members are also voting on strike action over pay. Most PCS members are women.

“It is hard to think of a more seminal moment in British working-class history,” she said, adding that she was confident PCS members would “smash” the statutory 50 per cent turnout for the ballot set by the government.

Earlier Heather Wood, national secretary of the Women Against Pit Closures movement, had addressed the conference and received a standing ovation when she said that although the coal mines had gone, the spirit of working-class resistance in the 1984-5 miners’ strike against pit closures lived on.

Ms Heathcote said: “Women Against Pit Closures is a story of working-class women using their collective strength and we should also draw inspiration from that.”