Reuters/London

British unions yesterday voted to back a campaign of co-ordinated strike action against a public sector pay cap imposed by the coalition government.

At the Trades Unions Congress (TUC) conference in Bournemouth, unions backed a motion calling for “support for necessary industrial action, co-ordinated across sectors where possible” to end the pay cap.

In March, Chancellor George Osborne announced a freeze on public sector wage rises, limiting increases to an average of 1%, would be extended until 2015-16.

A series of union leaders spoke out against the pay freezes, falling wages and the general impact of the government’s austerity programme yesterday, as Osborne announced Britain’s economy had turned a corner and was recovering.

“We need action, and my union believes we will need mass co-ordinated strike action to bring this government to the negotiating table and to defeat austerity,” said Janice Godrich, national president of the Public and Commercial Services union, one of Britain’s most militant.

Steve Turner, executive director of policy at Britain’s biggest union Unite called for “a day of peaceful civil disobedience” across Britain.

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said decent families were “facing worries that the Eton educated elite, with their serial holidays, hired help and inherited millions, simply haven’t got a clue about.”

Hundreds of thousands of public sector workers staged a co-ordinated walkout in a protest over pension reforms in December 2011. Unions claimed up to 2mn workers, including teachers, nurses and border guards, joined the strike in what was described as the biggest national action in a generation. Some unions representing the likes of teachers and firefighters have already voted for strikes over pay and pensions.