The UK faces its biggest strike in 11 years. This Wednesday (1st), a day before Prime Minister Rishi Sunak completes one hundred days in power, the country faces closed schools, stopped trains and absent employees in ministries due to “Walk Out Wednesday”, as the unions baptized the acts.
Workers from different sectors mobilized to claim better wages amidst inflation that reached 10.5% in December — two months earlier, the index reached 11.1%, a record in 41 years.
According to the unions, the strike involves drivers from ten railway companies, employees from 150 universities, 300,000 professors and about 100,000 employees from ministries, ports and airports —thus, the strikers could reach 500,000, the most expressive number since the server strike in 2011.
“If the government does nothing, we’ll see more days like today and more unions joining us,” said Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS (Public and Commercial Services Union), a union that represents 100,000 public employees from over from 120 government departments.
In recent months, the country has seen a wave of strikes across public and private sectors, including healthcare, transport and the postal service. The crisis led nurses to carry out, in December, their first national strike in the area’s union’s more than 100-year history. After an unsuccessful negotiation with the British government, they called two more strike days last month and another two in February.
This Wednesday, nearly 20,000 schools in England and Wales will be affected by the first of seven days of strikes called for February and March by teachers from kindergarten to high school.
“I’m a teacher in London and I’m having a hard time paying my rent,” Ciara Osullivan, 38, told the AFP news agency. “I have small children and would like to provide something beyond the basics for them.”
The Minister of Education, Gillian Keegan, in turn, defended that granting the required salary increases would be inconsistent with the situation of the State coffers, under strong pressure and indebtedness.
Keegan told the BBC that giving in to workers’ demands could worsen the country’s economic situation. “What we can’t do is give wage increases that reduce inflation for one part of the workforce and make it worse for everyone else. It’s not the most economically sensible thing to do,” he said.
The strikes promised a day of chaos, but the situation at busy train stations like London’s King’s Cross was quiet — thanks in part to the spread of remote work in the wake of Covid. Kate Lewis, 50, who got a train back to Newark in northern England, said she understood the strikers. “We are all in the same boat. We are all affected by inflation.”
Doctor Jonathan Novelle told the Reuters news agency that the UK was in a difficult situation and that resources were limited. “It’s sad, teachers. Children want to take their exams and there’s a lot of pressure on the whole population. It’s depressing,” he said, near London Bridge station.
Despite the disruption, 59% of Britons support the strike for nurses, 43% for teachers and 36% for railway workers, according to a poll by consultancy Public First. So far, the economy has not suffered major shocks from the shutdowns. According to the Center for Economics and Business Research, the cost of strikes over eight months was £1.7 billion. The body estimated the daily impact of the teachers’ strike to be £20 million.
The shutdowns especially affect the image of the Sunak government. The prime minister’s Conservative Party trails Labor by about 25 percentage points in opinion polls, and surveys indicate that the public thought the government’s handling of the crisis was bad.
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