The Guardian view on strikes in Britain: it’s not a return to the 1970s
Britain faces a rolling wave of strikes over pay and conditions in the coming months. The country’s railways will be effectively shut down for a week. Barristers will walk out from next Monday, stopping criminal trials in courts. Wage disputes have led to rubbish piling up in some parts of the country, while other regions have suffered late postal deliveries. Teachers and doctors are the latest professions threatening to strike if the government doesn’t meet their pay demands. But the country is not heading back to the 1970s. Trade unions in Britain have lost much of their clout in the workplace.
Despite the headlines, the number of days lost to strikes has collapsed. At their peak, about half of employees were union members. Now the figure is 24% and these are disproportionately found in the public sector – which is why the government is facing off against so many groups. With pay deals yet to be signed, ministers find themselves facing calls for inflation-linked wage increases for 5 million workers, including those in the NHS, the armed forces, the civil service and local government.
What makes the crisis seem familiar is the sequence of an energy shock, caused by a geopolitical crisis, followed by stagnating growth and inflation hitting highs not seen for decades. It would be hard to argue that key workers’ pay offers shouldn’t match inflation, which is projected to reach 11% this year. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says in the public sector employees have done even worse than those in the private sector, both over the past decade and during the pandemic.
The average teacher, even before the recent spurt in inflation, is paid 8% less than a decade ago. For nurses and midwives the figure is 7%. Yet rather than offer constructive talks and seek peace, ministers appear to be looking for a fight. Their threat – to change the law to allow firms to hire agency staff to replace striking workers – only works if Britain has the skilled staff to step in. That is not only doubtful in the case of
railways, but also experts say it may be in breach of the post-Brexit treaty Britain signed with the EU.
Boris Johnson’s government appears more interested in pushing the interests of business than that of workers. It was the Polish economist Michał Kalecki who emphasised that class conflict lay at the heart of economics. If we are dealing, as Kalecki suggested, with a power struggle between capital and labour, then workers have been comprehensively defeated. Even with inflation shooting skywards, real wages are falling while company profits are rising.
Commodity shocks may have sparked inflation. But to keep it going requires a fight between business, which is trying to maintain its share of national income via corporate margins, and labour, which is trying to do the same thing through higher wages. For all the talk of trade union militancy, there are few mechanisms – bar industrial action – for most workers to bid up their wages.
Employees are forced to take what the market pays. Such an imbalance won’t benefit the wider economy in the long run. Workers and bosses have a shared interest. Productivity incentives from greater employee power can boost profits as well. Without ministers stepping in on the side of workers to mediate class conflict and ensure the spoils – or the pain – of economic activity is evenly shared, Britain risks remaining trapped in a low-wage, lowgrowth spiral.