General secretary Brendan Barber of the United Kingdom's Trades Union Congress (TUC) is set to criticize the Government claiming that coalition's policies is taking the UK into a wider recession.

He is set to speak at the TUC Congress in Brighton, where he is likely to receive several calls for calling a general strike in the UK to protest the public sector pay freezes. The Socialist Workers Party (SWP), Prison Officers' Association and the RMT transport unions are all leaning towards a general strike while other unions like Unison, Unite and the GMB only want to take that route if the government reverses its order to freeze public sector pays.

The TUC Congress runs until Wednesday and it will see members of unions from across the UK. Mr Barber is set to step down from his post as general secretary at the end of the year. He points out that the government should focus on reforms to improve economic policy of the UK.

Mr Barber said, “It's clear that austerity simply isn't working. There has been no growth since the Government came to power over two years ago. In effect the economy has become a gigantic laboratory.”

He also said that the UK is standing at a crossroad where ‘one direction is decline, depression and despair. In the other is recovery, regeneration and renewal’.