Union wants windfall cash for public sector

Money from the windfall tax should be diverted from creating jobs for the unemployed to preventing mass redundancies in public services, according to the leader of Britain's biggest union.

Rodney Bickerstaff, general secretary of Unison, said it would be a "nonsense" if the government spent up to pounds 5bn of the emergency tax on 250,000 jobs for youngsters and the long term jobless if there were tens of thousands of job losses among public servants.

Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, has been warned by other ministers that large-scale redundancies are inevitable.

Speaking on the even of the public service union's annual conference in Brighton, Mr Bickerstaff said revenue from the windfall levy should be diverted to prevent redundancies though he conceded Mr Brown would want to emphasise the needs of the private sector.

"We have to ensure we are not creating work at one end and job losses at the other", Mr Bickerstaff said.

The only alternative would be to abandon the controls on spending planned by the previous government and adopted by the Blair administration. "The Government will have to spend more money," he said.

The Unison leader's assertions came ahead of a speech to the conference today by David Blunkett, Secretary of State for Education and Employment, who will inevitably encounter questions on the issue.

On present spending plans Mr Bickerstaff said big cuts in the workforce were inevitable in education, health and local government.

He said the expenditure regime would exert "very, very severe" pressure on all our hospitals by the autumn. There had already been local government redundancies throughout the country he said.

The job situation would be made worse unless there was an immediate end to compulsory competitive tendering and the Public Finance Initiative. Mr Bickerstaff said he had already met ministers to express his opinions.

The Unison leader, a champion of the National Minimum Wage, cast aside any suggestion that he might serve on the Low Pay Commission. He pointed out that George Bain, the new chairman, had set his face against any commissioners who had been "mandated" to argue for a specific figure.

Mr Bickerstaff made clear that he and his union would be fighting for a minimum wage struck at half male median earnings, which he calculated at pounds 4.42 an hour - pounds 168 a week before stoppages. He estimated that 19 million earned more than that figure and 5 million earned less.