Railway walkouts to hit UK commuters
Workers are up in arms as inflation hurts
LONDON (AFP) — Britain’s train network faces further heavy disruption Thursday and Saturday in major walkouts that follow the sector’s biggest strike action for 30 years already this summer.
Tens of thousands of staff are expected to strike over the two days, leaving a skeleton train service that will hit holidaymakers and commuters, even if home-working continues for many office staff after Covid restrictions were lifted.
London’s underground railway, the Tube, will be hit by a strike Saturday, ahead of an eight-day stoppage starting Sunday by dockers at Felixstowe, Britain’s largest freight port that is situated in eastern England.
“We will continue to do whatever is necessary to defend jobs, pay and conditions during this cost-of-living crisis,” Sharon Graham, head of major British union, Unite, said this week.
Unions accuse Transport Secretary Grant Shapps of not helping to resolve the impasse.
Shapps is part of the Conservative government that recently amended a law to allow agency staff to help fill gaps caused by strikes, further angering the RMT railway union.
Major UK business lobby group, the CBI, this week acknowledged workers’ ongoing “struggle with rising costs like energy prices” and said employers were “doing their level best to support staff.”
It also claimed, however, that “the vast majority” of companies “can’t afford large enough pay rises to keep up with inflation.”
Analysts are meanwhile forecasting sector-wide stoppages to last beyond the summer as inflation keeps on rising.
It comes as teachers and health workers have hinted at possible walkouts should they not receive new pay deals deemed acceptable.
More than 115,000 British postal workers employed by former state-run Royal Mail plan a four-day strike from the end of August.
Telecoms giant BT will face its first stoppage in 35 years and walkouts have recently taken place or are soon to occur by Amazon warehouse staff, criminal lawyers and refuse collectors.
Tens of thousands of staff are expected to strike.