TRADE unions are making plans to challenge Con-Dem pay cuts with a summer strike that could see millions of workers walk out together.

Members of five unions could take action on July 10 over the Tory-led government’s attacks on public-sector pay, the Star understands.

National Union of Teachers members have already voted for a summer strike and the union may decide to join the walkout at its next executive meeting.

Action over separate industrial disputes on the same day is designed to send a message to Con-Dem ministers that they cannot drive through cuts by picking off individual groups of workers.

General unions Unison, GMB and Unite are all balloting their members working in local government after turning down a below-inflation 1 per cent pay offer.

The unions warned that “industrial action looks inevitable” in a joint statement after negotiations ended without agreement in February.

Underpaid nurses and other NHS workers could also take part after last month’s Unison health conference approved a strike ballot.

And the three unions’ members could be joined on the streets by teachers and civil servants who have already voted for walkouts.

The NUT was set to strike next month over Education Secretary Michael Gove’s assault on the profession, which includes an end to national pay rates and raising the retirement age to 68.

But the date of its latest stand for eduction could now be moved to July 10 as plans for the huge walkout gain momentum.

NUT executive member Gawain Little said: "The NUT is looking to co-ordinate action with other unions to protect all of our public services and its users from the government's neoliberal restructuring."

Government departments could be left empty on the day of the unprecedented action as civil servants represented by PCS walk out of Whitehall offices.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka has been urging union colleagues to strike together since the Tories took power in 2010.

The Star can reveal the fightback plans after Tory Prime Minister David Cameron confirmed yesterday that he supports even more restrictive trade-union laws.

“I think the time has come for a thresholds in strike ballots in essential services,” he said on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show.

“It’s not something I can achieve in a coalition government. It is something that will be in our manifesto.”

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady hit back immediately at his “return to Thatcherite nostrums.”

She said: “Workers in Britain already face the toughest barriers to taking action to defend their living standards of any almost any advanced democracy.

“This has helped turn our country into one of the most unequal, where billionaires co-exist with foodbanks.

“The Prime Minister now wants to make industrial action even more difficult.

“This shows his readiness to take the side of employers and big business against ordinary working people as his party’s backwoodsmen call the shots.”