CITY bosses have revealed that next week’s traffic warden strike will cost the council nearly £100,000.

Around 40 traffic wardens, maintenance engineers and cash collectors will walk out as part of a wave of strikes that has left rotting rubbish piling up around the city.

Union leaders say they have no choice but to strike because council managers refuse to budge over planned pay cuts.

But council leader Royston Smith warned the parking strike would lead to the loss of the council’s main source of income and threaten jobs and services.

He said: “If, as a result of this strike action, the council loses income, even more pressure will be put on our finances.”

Losing just one week’s income would be equivalent to the annual salary of about five binmen or traffic wardens.

Cllr Smith said he expected the majority of people not to exploit the situation and cause parking chaos.

He said: “Southampton residents are law abiding, honest people and in similar situations in the past the majority of our customers continued to abide by the parking rules as normal.”

The council has confirmed that a handful of parking managers will be driving around in marked vehicles to hand out tickets and collect cash from machines.

Motorists were also warned parking without paying would be “at their own risk”.

About 4,300 council workers have been threatened with dismissal if they don’t sign up to the new contracts in July 11 that will cut their pay by up to 5.5 per cent.

Tory council leaders, who are axing around 250 staff, including senior managers, say the pay cuts are needed to make budgets savings and save more than 400 more job losses over the next two years.

The council said it was talking to mediation service ACAS about setting up a meeting in a bid to end the industrial action.

But union leaders, who have been calling for talks, said the council still had not contacted them.

Unite regional officer Ian Woodland said: “We are committed to a negotiated solution but it seems that Cllr Smith and the Conservatives are more busy leafleting and targeting bins with anti-union messages.”

The council's Unison branch secretary Mike Tucker said: "Royston Smith has created this crisis because no other council has imposed such a large cost. It is a crisis that he should be talking to the unions to resolve."