Fresh industrial action is to hit Government departments because of a worsening dispute with civil servants over pay and jobs, union leaders have warned.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) will be among the first to be targeted by the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS), with the Department for Constitutional Affairs and Crown Prosecution Service also affected.
The union unveiled other plans, including contacting candidates in the Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament and English council elections in May to ask if they supported the campaign. Union members will be told which candidates reply, which could shape the way they vote in the crucial elections.
General secretary Mark Serwotka said: "There will be widespread industrial action and we are preparing for a campaign that will take as long as necessary."
Mr Serwotka claimed that defence minister Adam Ingram was refusing to meet the union because comments he made during previous talks were included in a PCS bulletin to members.
"He said during the meeting that he did not respond to our campaign about saving jobs because he was only interested in the armed forces. He is now acting in an incredibly immature way because these are serious issues about the future of thousands of workers," Mr Serwotka said.
The union said it feared that 4,000 MoD workers faced losing their jobs under plans to privatise services.
Mr Serwotka said tens of thousands of civil servants took part in a national one day strike last month which he claimed took the Government by surprise. "They have made the wrong judgment every time on this because they didn't believe we would go on strike in the first place and then thought the campaign would end after the strike went ahead.
"In fact we are now ratcheting up the action and this has the potential to be a really acrimonious dispute unless the government agrees to negotiate with us."
The union is in dispute over job losses, privatisation of services and pay which it warned will only get worse unless the deadlock is broken.
