Driving examiners and Rural Payments Agency workers begin a series of strikes by civil servants across England, Scotland and Wales on Tuesday.
The members of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) will be followed by those working for the National Highways, the Border Force and a number of offices in the Department for Work and Pensions in the coming weeks.
Around 100,000 PCS members working in 214 government departments and other bodies have voted for strike action over pay, pensions, jobs and redundancy terms.
PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: “This is the start of the most sustained strike action by civil servants for a generation.
“They have been offered just a 2% pay rise at a time when inflation is running at over 10%.
“They are determined, they are strong and they been left with no other way of expressing their concerns about the cost-of-living crisis than to take strike action.”
Around 1,600 PCS members working for the Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) will be joined on strike by almost 100 workers at the Rural Payments Agency (RPA).
The month-long rolling strike programme by DVSA workers runs from Tuesday to December 18 in Scotland and northern England before spreading to north-west England, Yorkshire, Humberside and North Wales between December 19-24, the West Midlands, eastern England and the East Midlands between December 28-31 and January 3, culminating in London, the South East, South Wales and the South West between January 4-11.
RPA workers in Workington, Caernarfon and Newcastle are taking action from Tuesday to December 16, and again between December 19-23, January 3-6 and 9-13.
Mr Serwotka added: “For the Government’s own workforce to be reduced to using food banks because they can’t afford to buy food or burning candles at home because they can’t afford to turn their lights on is nothing short of a scandal.
“Rather than trying to tighten anti-trade union laws, attacking the unions and avoiding responsibility for the mess they’ve caused, the Government should address the real issue faced by hundreds of thousands of workers and put some money on the table to resolve the dispute and, more importantly, help its own workforce survive the winter.”
