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Members of Amicus and the Transport and General Workers union (TGWU) have voted to merge and create Britain's largest trade union.

The as yet un-named super-union will have more than two million members and represent workers from sectors ranging from manufacturing and aviation to financial and voluntary.

In the associated ballot of 86 per cent of TGWU members and 70 per cent of Amicus members voted to merge, but voter turnout was low at just over a quarter.

Nevertheless union leaders say they have been given a "powerful mandate".

TGWU general secretary Tony Woodley, who together with his Amicus counterpart Derek Simpson will act as joint general secretaries until the end of the decade, said that the new union now had an "historic opportunity".

"The new union will be a progressive, organising, fighting back industrial giant focused above all on winning for our members in the workplace and taking trade unionism to the millions who need it," he commented.

And Mr Simpson said the super-union, which will come into existence on May 1st this year, would become the "greatest campaigning force on behalf of ordinary people that has ever existed".

He insisted: "It is a precursor to the creation of a single global trade union movement capable of challenging the might of multinationals who seek to play workforces and governments off against each other to reduce jobs and hard won pay and conditions."

Potential names for the new union will be put before members in a ballot in the near future.