Your nine to five days are over, council workers told

Council workers are being told to end their "nine to five" mentality so that libraries, schools and other services can be run at times that suit the public rather than the staff.

Ministers opened up a new front against public-service unions, representing 1.3 million town hall workers, yesterday with a radical package of reforms that also included a demand for what amounted to a no-strike deal. Leaders of more than 400 councils are seeking far more flexibility to set wages and conditions locally.

Unions believe the plans could seriously undermine their rights and national industrial action could follow. Council workers form the biggest single bargaining group, covering about 5 per cent of the nation's workforce.

At the heart of the blueprint set out by the Local Government Association is the assertion that council staff are working at times convenient to them rather than to householders and that out-of-hours services are prohibitively expensive because of premium pay rates. Management wants to open libraries, schools and advice services at times when the public are better able to use them.

While yesterday's submission to the Local Government Pay Commission was drawn up under the supervision of senior councillors from all three main parties, there was little doubt that Labour members had run the proposals past ministers, who had registered their approval of the strategy.

The public-service unions are already fighting the Government over foundation hospitals and the Fire Brigades Union is threatening to call fresh industrial action in the absence of new pay negotiations.

Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, the largest public-service union, said that at a time when the private sector was moving away from local pay determination, the local government proposals were both "dangerous and dated".

He said the policy would drive down pay rates among low-paid women who made up the bulk of the workforce.

"As to the nine-to-five culture, employers are completely out of touch with their own workforce. People work long hours, sometimes unpaid, in order to deliver services when people need them. It's about time employers recognised their workers' 21st-century working practices."

John Edmonds, general secretary of the GMB general union, said the proposals meant the end of national pay bargaining, which would drive down pay and increase recruitment and retention problems. "This move would be costly and bureaucratic as well as increasing problems such as equal pay and respect for part-time workers. The commission should dismiss the employers' weak evidence and question their political motives."

Union officials said there was no question of accepting a no-strike agreement.

Sources at the Local Government Association (LGA) said its submission was a means of defending national bargaining at a time when many councils were questioning its validity. The commission is an advisory body set up as part of the settlement to last year's pay dispute, which involved a 24-hour national strike.

The sources said proposals on industrial action did not amount to a ban on strikes, but were aimed at making them "unimaginable".

John Horrell, a senior Tory member of the LGA, said increased flexibility over working hours would benefit employees as well as council tax payers.