In an interview with The Telegraph last week, reacting to this week's proposed public sector walkout, Maude said that it was too easy for unions to continue to strike; because once a union had carried out one legal strike it had a mandate for more strikes without ballot until the end of the dispute.

Maude wants to introduce a time limit, possibly as low as three months, after which another ballot would have to take place if the union wanted industrial action to continue.

However, unite national officer Steve Sibbald told PrintWeek that Maude should be concentrating on bringing an end to the dispute, rather than planning changes to legislation.

He said: "We reballot after 12 weeks to protect our members. After 12 weeks an employer can legally dismiss people without facing tribunal. When you are dealing with small multi-site businesses work can be moved around and of course if you sack the employees they don't get redundancy.

"Maude will be thinking specifically of the public sector here because of course you can't sack 3m people at once so they are already protected. But honestly, how many times does this happen? In my 31 years with the union I can honestly say I don't think this has come up once."

Sibbald said that if there were to be changes to laws regarding strike action, there were far more sensible changes that could be made.

He added: "For example, if you ballot for strike action you have to take that action within 28 days. So if the company comes back with a better offer, you still have to strike or you reballot in order to cancel the strike for discussions. It would be easier if a strike could just be postponed.

"I think around 30% of the members voted in the ballot for Wednesday's strikes and the reason for that is because workplace ballots are not allowed. Postal ballots always bring less of a response, you probably would have got 80% if it was workplace and then you get a far better idea of what the workforce wants to do."