A second 24-hour NHS strike will be staged during the Labour party conference next week, Unison has confirmed.
Placard-waving strikers were on duty at picket lines in Derbyshire, Cheshire, West Yorkshire, Kent and Suffolk today as the first health service strike in almost twenty years took place over plans to privatise an NHS supply arm, NHS Logistics.
The decision to go ahead with a second day of industrial action during the party conference will embarrass the government, which is trying to push through controversial public sector reforms.
Unison, the public sector union, has tabled a motion critical of the government over the sale of the NHS body to DHL, a German parcel company, and is confident of receiving strong support from delegates.
In an unprecedented vote of no confidence in the leadership's reform agenda, the Labour party's national executive is expected to back the Unison motion condemning privatisation in the health service, the Guardian revealed today.
This would be the first time that the NEC has voted against Mr Blair since he became party leader 12 years ago.
But a report published today by the Confederation of British Industry suggests that Mr Blair's views chime with those of the general public.
A poll of 2,500 adults conducted by the business lobby group showed that almost two out of three believed that private sector firms should be allowed to provide public services as long as they were of high quality. The CBI said its study showed that unions who argued against public service reform were "out of touch" with the public mood.
The CBI's director general, Richard Lambert, said: "This new poll proves that attempts to derail public services reform are not only misguided, they also misjudge the public mood.
"People want more reform, not less, to bring services up to the levels they rightly expect."
Brendan Barber, the general secretary of the TUC, said that it was "ludicrous" to accuse the millions of people who provide our public services of trying to scupper reform.
"Trade union members work hard to deliver public services day in, day out, but they also rely on them to educate and care for their families.
"The public and employees want outstanding public services but are equally concerned about how businesses intend to make money from our health and education."
Karen Jennings, head of health at Unison, said evidence shows people "care deeply" who provides health services and didn't want private companies making profits out of the sick and elderly.
"Contracting out in the NHS led to the number of hospital cleaning staff being cut in half, resulting in dirtier hospitals.
"Around 5,000 people die and 100,000 patients suffer from hospital-acquired infections each year. Quality must come before cost and patients before profits," she said.
The decision to stage an NHS strike for the first time in almost twenty years received strong support from other public sector workers and members of the general public, according to the union.
Unison said council workers and firefighters had visited picket lines mounted by NHS Logistics staff across England.
The workers started a 24-hour walkout at 10 o'clock last night in protest at the privatisation of their jobs.
Unison's general secretary, Dave Prentis, joined pickets in Maidstone and praised the "solid support" for the strike.
The union warned that hospitals in England would quickly run out of bulky items such as disposable bed pans and would run short of hand gel, latex glovers and some items of food.
But the government said that it did not believe that the strikes would cause much disruption to hospitals and has told patients not to be unduly worried.
In a blow to plans to derail the multi-billion pound sale, the union revealed today that it had dropped plans to seek a judicial review to reverse the decision to hive off the service after its lawyers warned that it had a slim chance of succeeding.
A union official said that Unison had decided to withdraw from taking legal action rather than waste the time of the courts and waste members' money.
