Union leaders fired salvos Tuesday at Finance Minister Dwight Duncan’s austerity budget, charging that the province’s multi-billion dollar deficit should not be overcome at the expense of public sector workers.

“For labour, he is perilously close to picking a big fight,” said Warren Thomas, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union.

The budget, intended to help reduce next year’s projected deficit of $15.2 billion, proposes wage freezes for 1.2 million public servants, with a tough warning that the move would be legislated, if necessary. It also calls for Ontario to enact pension plan changes that would force workers to split costs evenly with the province.

“Look, a child-care worker that makes $28,000 a year, a school board secretary that makes $35,000, these are not the people on the backs of which we should balance the budget,” said Fred Hahn, president of the 200,000-member CUPE Ontario.

“The people who elected this government did not elect a government to cut the crap out of their jobs and out of their services across the province.”

With the budget, the government wants to save $6 billion over the next three years by stopping pay increases to all public sector workers, including teachers and doctors, rather than conduct large-scale layoffs. Two-year-old wage freezes for public sector executives would be extended two more years.

Thomas called the Liberals “Tories in disguise” but said he’s not going to red alert over Duncan’s budget just yet.

“I’ll wait until he kicks us in the you-know-what and then battle him if I have to,” Thomas said.

Ontario Federation of Labour president Sid Ryan, whose organization speaks for 700,000 unionized workers, predicted the wage freeze and pension changes were like the second coming of former NDP premier Bob Rae’s “social contract” of 1993.

“You don’t show respect when you give somebody a slap across the face,” he said.

Duncan said the freeze would be negotiated, in 4,000 different labour agreements, through collective bargaining, adding the province wouldn’t hesitate to use legal means to re-start service disruptions should talks stall.

“We are prepared to propose necessary administrative and legislative measures to . . . to protect jobs for teachers, education staff, and health-care workers,” the finance minister said. “This is not a choice we would make lightly.”

But Ryan said Drummond’s plan to cut $17 billion by 2017-18 serves corporate interests, while undercutting labour’s.

“This is a banker’s budget, written by a banker, designed by a banker for bankers and for the financial sector and the corporations.”

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Ryan said “a massive protest” would be held at Queen’s Park on April 21.

With files from Robert Benzie, Rob Ferguson and Richard Brennan