STRIKING Southampton council workers will take their protest to the streets of Winchester on Saturday, joining a mass demonstration against cuts.

Union leaders are today expected to announce further strikes in Southampton ahead of more talks with the council tomorrow to try to resolve a bitter industrial dispute over pay cuts of between two and 5.5 per cent faced by around 4,300 workers.

Up to 2,400 Unison and Unite members at the Tory-run council have been refusing overtime and working to rule while bin men, street cleaners, traffic wardens and Itchen Bridge toll collectors have all walked out in recent weeks. Rubbish collections will resume tomorrow when bin men return to work but they could be called out again from next Tuesday.

Council leader Royston Smith insists the pay cuts will protect 400 jobs as the council looks to cut £65m from its budget over the next four years. Around 250 jobs, including one fifth of senior managers, are being axed this year.

More than 1,000 trade unionists, community campaigners, pensioners and students from across Hampshire will converge on Winchester on Saturday to demand an end to the “vicious and totally unnecessary”

cuts they say are destroying jobs and services. They will march through the city centre to a lunchtime rally at Oram’s Arbour.

Union leaders representing the Southampton council workers will share a platform with speakers from the Public and Commercial Services Union and National Union of Teachers ahead of a national walkout next Thursday.

Up to 750,000 teachers, civil servants and other public sector employees are set to strike in a row over pensions, but industrial action could spread later in the year to over a million workers. Unions have warned it will result in the closure of Hampshire schools.

Dave Prentis, leader of Unison, has warned the outbreak of industrial unrest could be the worst since the 1926 General Strike.

But John Cridland, the director general of the CBI, said that the public will display a “Dunkirk spirit” to deal with the disruption He said he believed the public did not want to be “messed around” and would do all they could to get on with their normal lives.