One was given to understand that strikes and industrial action, especially in the womb of the Industrial Revolution, were passe and belonged to another era. Reformed Capitalism, it has been subtly preached, has a way of adjusting pressure points like wages not keeping pace with inflation. The ability for internal reform by ‘welfare capitalism’ had made collective bargaining by workers redundant.
These theories are in tatters now as a wave of strikes in the United Kingdom (UK) before Christmas has left health services and transport paralyzed. Rising inflation driven by high energy costs has touched double digits but wages are stagnant. This has triggered a spate of strikes in the public sector – a ‘winter of discontent’ of proportions not seen since the last wave of industrial action in 1976.
This week on Thursday 10,000 ambulance workers walked off their jobs. Earlier, nurses went on strike on the 15th and 20th of December to press for a rise in pay. More strikes are scheduled in January.
Public transport during the busy Christmas season has been virtually paralyzed as the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) has announced it will strike work from 24th to 27th December. Train drivers have also announced strike dates in early January.
Rail workers have been disrupting services for the last few months, but now Royal Mail staff to have decided to strike work before Christmas. A cascading effect can be seen as 100,000 civil servants have voted for strike action, and teachers, junior doctors and University staff are all in the queue to join the walk-outs.
Hardship sparks strikes
According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), wages in the UK have fallen most precipitously since 2001 and the public sector is bearing the brunt of this crisis.While the average pay rise in the private sector was 6.9% in mid-2022, for the public sector wage growth has been just around 2.7%.
This has to be seen in the context of a hyper inflation rate of 11%, which means wages have declined in real terms and the public sectorhas fared the worst.
The nursing union has not called for a walk-out in its 106 years of existence, and this is the first large collective action since 1990.This is how desperate their situation is. Besides low wages, poor staffing has led to overcrowded hospitals pushing the nurses to the brink.
The last General Strike the country saw was almost a century ago in 1926, and a similar wave of wage related walk-outs and industrial action was the ‘winter of discontent’ in 1976. As strikes by various public sector employees intensify, public opinion is shifting in support of the protestors.
The conservative Rishi Sunak government says the strikes are part of a radical, disruptive movement which will push up inflation. But most Britons are not buying this narrative. According to a recent YouGov poll, people have become more likely since June to support the right to strike by nurses, teachers, and other public sector workers.There is still suspicion about unions, prevalent since UK’s Prime Minister Margaret Thacher broke UK’s powerful unions in 1986; but public opinion is now shifting.
Sunak takes a hard line
It current rash of strikes as a sudden development. The crisis in Britain’s public services has been building up over the last two decades under various Tory governments.It started with the Prime Minister David Cameron scripting his “age of austerity” by reducing government spending in the 2007-09 period. Between 2010-13, to tackle huge budget deficits, the Tory government cut public spending by £14.3 billion compared with 2009–10. The tight-fisted approach has continued till today reducing funding to community schools, senior citizens and other safety nets on which the UK’s ‘welfare state’ is built.
Toeing the same line, the Rishi Sunak government has taken a hard stand on wage concessions arguing that meeting union demands would cost billions of pounds and “lock in inflation for an even longer period of time”.On one ground, there is no progress on negotiations. The RMT rail union has rejected a 9% offer from Network Rail saying it is to low. Likewise, the Nurses have demanded a 19% wage rise but the government has only accepted a 4.75% increase for NHS staff and ambulance workers based on a Pay Review Committee recommendation.
Meanwhile, the Tory Party is baying for fresh laws to make it difficult for employees to launch strike action.Tory MPs have also questioned their government on why it has failed to keep the railways running during the strike period. They have demanded government push ahead with legislation to prevent transport shutdowns introduced 3 years ago in Parliament, but stalled since.
The deteriorating financials of the government with the Ukraine war has only hardened the battle lines, and an early negotiated settlement looks difficult.In all likelihood, the ‘winter of discontent’ will probably spill over into January. More significantly, collective action and trade unions – once relegated to history – seem to be making a comeback and have to be now reckoned with.