ALL workers should prepare to strike to force the government make Britain fairer, the head of the country’s largest union will tell the 140th Durham Miners’ Gala on Saturday.

Unison general secretary Andrea Egan will address tens of thousands of people at the largest labour and union event in Europe.

She will say that workers need to be “organising hard, getting ready to fight and preparing to strike” as the collective voice and power of unions is needed as much as ever if Britain is to become fairer.

“Millions upon millions of people in this country are struggling. Families with children are going hungry and public services are still in tatters,” the union leader is expected to say.

“Staff are overworked, underpaid and disrespected while wealth piles up at the top.  

“Even with all that is facing us, politicians are more interested in spending money on weapons and foreign wars than investing in people.”

She will add that there must be “a message to those in power, bosses and politicians alike, that it’s the working class who keep the country going.”

Union members need to build “real power” so those in charge “sit up when we say we won’t accept pay cuts and poverty, we won’t accept a broken country and we won’t accept a society stacked against us anymore.”

Her speech comes as the union launched a month-long strike ballot of council and school workers across England and Wales over their 3.3 per cent pay offer on Thursday. 

Around 200,000 employees are being asked whether they want to take industrial action if the wage proposal does not increase.