COUNCIL workers threatened with the privatisation of their jobs have agreed to hold a ballot for a strike which could see services across the city grind to a halt.

At a packed meeting Unison members unanimously agreed to hold a vote on industrial action.

The proposed strike action, which would involve all 2,900 union members employed by Southampton City Council except school workers, would take place in February.

Unison branch secretary Mike Tucker urged his members to back the ballot, to be held in January. They responded with a unanimous show of 126 hands.

The union says the council is preparing to sack 300 care workers for refusing to accept wage cuts, to take forward plans which could see 800 jobs going private and to axe 100 jobs to plug a shortfall in the council's draft budget for 2007/8.

Mr Tucker warned the moves amounted to "fundamental change" meaning lower pay and a higher workload.

"The solution is to disrupt things so the transfer doesn't go ahead, the redundancies don't go ahead and wage cuts don't go ahead," he said.

Members also agreed to encourage friends and family to vote for councillors opposed to the privatisation in the May elections.

The council is planning to hand the running of key services such as information technology to the private sector. Capita became the lead bidder after BT withdrew from negotiations.

Last week the Daily Echo revealed how the council had written to 300 home care and elderly person workers threatening redundancies if they did not accept lower paid contracts.

Mr Tucker accused the council of breaching employment law. He said: "We believe the council has taken a number of illegal acts and are encouraging members to put in individual grievances.

"Hopefully the council with withdraw the redundancy notices."

Mr Tucker said a letter outlining the breaches and threatening legal action had been sent to the council.

The 220 union members affected will be separately balloted on industrial action later this month.

A council spokesman said it was still in negotiations with Capita, which it believes "can bring benefits to staff and customers". He added that a decision on whether to press ahead with the talks takes place in March with the final decision in September.

The spokesman said Unison was fully involved in budget discussions over a "wide range of options for savings and efficiencies".

He said: "It is disappointing that it feels it necessary to ballot its members on industrial action at this stage."

The spokesman added the care worker contract offers were "fair and competitive" with higher pay rates than the independent sector.