Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
U.K. loses 2.5 million work days
Last year’s tally of strikes’ toll worst since Thatcher era
The U. K. economy lost nearly 2.5 million working days to strikes last year as Britain suffered its most severe industrial action since Margaret Thatcher was in power.
The Office for National Statistics said Tuesday that 843,000 working days were lost because of labor disputes in December, making it the worst month in more than a decade.
That took the total for June to the end of the year to 2,472,000 days lost. The last time it was worse was 198990, toward the end of Thatcher’s time as prime minister. Up until June, the Office for National Statistics had temporarily stopped measuring the data because of covid-19.
Unions are railing against pay offers that fall behind the U.K.’s rate of inflation.
Protests have escalated this year with major walkouts held by hundreds of thousands of rail staff, civil servants, teachers and workers in the National Health Service and elsewhere in the public sector. On Feb. 1 as many as half a million went on strike together.
“The wave of industrial action across the U.K. isn’t going away,” said Sharon Graham, general secretary of the union Unite. Responding to the Office for National Statistics data, she said workers “have no option but to fight for better wages.”
The union rejected another pay offer for rail workers at the end of last week, raising the prospect of more train strikes.
Nurses’ strikes extending over two consecutive days could become more common, according to reports.
“A continuous 48- hour strike that includes staff from emergency departments, intensive care units and cancer care services would likely have the biggest impact on patients we’ve seen,” Saffron Cordery, deputy chief execu
tive at NHS Providers, said in an emailed statement at the weekend.
Junior doctors are expected to vote in their thousands in support of strikes with a ballot closing next week and industrial action due early March. More ambulance drivers in southern England and Yorkshire also joined the wider National Health Service dispute over the weekend and will take part in upcoming strikes.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government has refused to lift public sector remuneration for the current fiscal year beyond levels proposed by pay review bodies that it insists are independent. Unions say they will keep fighting, with rail workers and Royal Mail staff being reballoted for the right to hold strikes into the summer and possibly beyond.
Unite general secretary Graham said Tuesday that Sunak resembled “the captain of the Titanic” after he reshuffled his government in the face of mass protests and weak poll ratings.
Private sector wages have outpaced the public sector in the past two years, but the rate of increase in government roles has jumped to 4.2% according to official data released Tuesday — the fastest since 2006. Climbing salaries are raising concern that inflation could remain persistently high.
While the strikes may not have had a huge effect on GDP, shops, bars and restaurants in city centers have suffered from disruption on the public transport system. Footfall at shopping areas near central London offices was up more than 36% year-on-year last week as commuters returned after train strikes at the start of the month, according to data company Springboard. A year earlier, many Britons were still working from home because of the omicron variant.