THOUSANDS of council workers will take industrial action over controversial changes to their wages.

From midnight on Tuesday, up to 10,000 Unison members at Lancashire County Council will refuse to work overtime, use their cars for work or cover for vacant posts.

It follows a ballot of workers by union bosses, who say they do not want to affect council services.

An out-and-out strike was rejected, but ‘action short of a strike’ was accepted by 67 per cent of the members who responded to the ballot.

Lancashire County Council said it would ‘work to minimise’ the impact on services of the action – called ‘until further notice’.

The action follows the fallout from the equal pay review of staff contracts, which has seen thousands of salaries changed and a controversial single set of terms and conditions imposed in an attempt to set all staff on the same pay scale.

More than 9,000 of County Hall’s 30,000 non-teaching staff live in East Lancashire, and Unison has more than 12,000 members.

But many of these are classroom assistants, who have been badly affected by the wage review, but not yet been balloted because of the summer holidays.

Both parties insisted they would continue to talk to try to resolve the dispute, but yesterday Unison issued a ‘call to action’ to its members.

Unison is the county council’s biggest union with a strong rep-resentation in most departments.

Burnley resident Carol Lukey, the Unison branch secretary, insisted she was happy with the 34 per cent response to the ballot.

She said: “Governments have been elected on less. We’re not saying we want fantastic pay.

"We want reasonable pay and reasonable conditions.

“For people to take this action in this climate shows feelings are running high.”

The new terms and conditions include an end to an allowance for staff who use their cars for work, no extra pay for working weekends, and charges to park at County Hall.

Ms Lukey said many of the workers classified by bosses as ‘winners’ from the wage review had lost out overall because of the new terms and conditions.

Carol Mills, the county council’s outgoing human resources director, said: “Clearly we’re keen to minimise the impact on county council services and Lancashire residents, so we will be talking to Unison in the coming days to find the best way forward."