Staff at the British Passport Office in the United Kingdom began a five-week strike in the increasingly bitter civil service dispute over jobs, pay, pensions and conditions.
More than 1,000 members of Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) at eight sites walked out in the long-running row.
The PCS General Secretary, Mark Serwotka, announced on Monday.
According to Serwotka, PCS will mount picket lines outside offices in Glasgow, Durham, Liverpool, Southport, Peterborough and London among others.
The union said it would support those taking action, with a strike fund.
Serwotka had written to the government, calling for urgent talks in a bid to resolve the dispute.
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He had accused ministers of treating their employees differently to others in the public sector after negotiations were held with unions representing health workers and teachers.
The union is stepping up strikes with a nationwide walkout of more than 130,000 civil servants planned for April 28.
The Home Office said the passport office had processed more than 2.7 million applications this year.
It added that over 99.7 per cent of standard applications were being processed within 10 weeks, with the majority of those delivered to customers well under this timescale.
However, currently, there are no plans to change official guidance.
Existing guidance states that it takes up to 10 weeks to get a passport.
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