Cameron’s anger as unions mull mass strike action during London Olympics
DAVID Cameron has condemned calls from the leader of the UK’s biggest trade union for strike action during the Olympics as “completely unacceptable and unpatriotic”.
Len McCluskey, head of Unite, had said workers should consider disrupting the Games as a protest against the government’s planned slowdown of public spending.
McCluskey said people coming to Britain for the Games should be made aware of union anger. “The attacks that are being launched on public sector workers at the moment are so deep and ideological that the idea the world should arrive in London and have these wonderful Olympic Games as though everything is nice and rosy in the garden is unthinkable,” he told the Guardian.
London’s transport infrastructure will already be stretched to the limit during the Games and the Tube is particularly vulnerable.
Strikes would also make it harder for businesses trying to maintain normal working patterns.
MWB Business Exchange, a firm that specialises in flexible workspaces, said yesterday that following McCluskey’s pronouncement they had “received more than 255 calls from different companies”, all “specifically asking about relocating out of central London” during the Olympics.
Labour leader Ed Miliband, whose party receives a substantial proportion of its funding from Unite, said “any threat to the Olympics is totally unacceptable and wrong”.