For the first time since Tony Blair entered Downing Street, staff from the two unionised emergency services - fire and ambulances - are balloting for strike action.
Ambulance crews are furious at the miserable 3 percent pay offer that has been made to the majority of NHS staff other than nurses and professionals.
Fire fighters, many of whom have already been involved in campaigns and localised strikes against budget cuts, station closures and job losses even since the new government took office, are also to vote on whether to strike in defence of their unique national pay agreement The FBU deal, won as a result of a bitter 10-week national strike against the Callaghan government, links firefighters' pay to the top quartile of male manual earnings.
Though this formula has brought a few years in which increases were below inflation, the deal has been upheld for two decades, throughout the years of Thatcher government.
Only now have Tony Blair's team of union-bashers decided to question whether the deal is compatible with fire fighters retaining the right to strike.
Home office ministers have begun discussing "further measures" to prevent action by the FBU from disrupting emergency services.
In a letter leaked to the FBU