U.K. Braces for Biggest Strikes in Years Over the Holiday Period

[Doka]

LONDON—The U.K. is set to face some of the worst strikes in at least a decade, raising fears that a “winter of discontent” will hit the country as workers push for bigger pay raises amid double-digit inflation and a gloomy economic outlook.

University professors, teachers, railway staff and even security guards at the luxury department store Harrods have held strikes recently. Nurses for Britain’s state health service are threatening their first-ever strike on selected days near Christmas and ambulance drivers have voted to walk out for the first time in 30 years. Passport-control officials also announced a strike in December at several U.K. airports.

On Friday, some 115,000 staff at the Royal Mail walked off the job, the first of six strike days planned ahead of Christmas that will disrupt postal service across the U.K. 

The labor strife underscores the challenge for governments across Europe as inflation hits its highest levels in decades due in part to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which sent energy prices soaring and added to pressure from supply-chain disruptions from the pandemic. Governments and companies say much of the inflationary impact should begin easing in coming months, and warn that large pay increases could entrench inflation. Unions argue that workers face a cost-of-living crisis and can’t afford to see their inflation-adjusted wages fall.

The situation is particularly bad in the U.K., which has Europe’s second-highest rate of inflation after Germany and is facing a recession that economists expect to last a year or possibly two. Disposable household income adjusted for inflation is set to fall 7% over the next two fiscal years, the biggest drop in records going back to the 1950s, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility, an independent budget watchdog. The U.K. also had the Group of Seven’s third-highest inflation rate after Germany and Italy in October, according to figures from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

For months, trade unions have been locked in a strong-arm contest with employers and the British government as they look to boost wage offers that they say are well below the current 11.1% pace of inflation. Average pay growth for the U.K. private sector was 6.6% in July to September 2022, compared with 2.2% for the public sector, according to the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics.
Workers from U.K. labor unions including the state health service, teachers, postal staff and fire fighters are striking over pay increases. ANDY RAIN/EPA/Shutterstock (3), Phil Noble/Reuters

“The last thing [workers] want to do is take strike action, but the government has left them with no choice,” said Rachel Harrison, national secretary of the GMB union, one of the country’s biggest unions, representing workers from sectors across the economy, including paramedics.

Some unions estimate more than a million working days will be lost to strike action this year, potentially hitting levels not seen since the end of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher‘s term in power, which was marked with frequent clashes with labor unions.

“In the past it was possible to get public opinion against the strikers, these days there is much more public sympathy,” says Richard Hyman, professor of industrial relations at the London School of Economics. “If the government wants to tough it out, things might get more serious.” An Ipsos poll in November found that 59% of the British public support the nurses’ strike.
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Mr. Hyman expects the strikes to be the biggest in at least two decades.

So far, the U.K. government has tried to resist the unions’ calls for wages moving in line with inflation, saying the country’s finances can’t take the strain. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has already announced spending cuts and tax increases as the government looks to eventually begin lowering its debt in coming years.

“If the union leaders continue to be unreasonable then it is my duty to take action to protect lives and livelihoods,” said Mr. Sunak on Wednesday, adding that he was planning to introduce legislation to force a minimum level of service in public services. Ambulance drivers have said they would only respond to life-or-death emergencies such as a heart attack or stroke, leaving the possibility that other incidents such as broken hips could leave patients waiting in pain. Negotiations are ongoing to try to avoid these strikes.

Critics say the government hasn’t done enough to try to avert the disruption. “He should get round the table and resolve these issues,” said Labour Party leader Keir Starmer.

The industrial disputes are drawing comparisons to Britain’s so-called winter of discontent in the late 1970s, when the country was hit by mass shutdowns and rolling blackouts as workers pushed for better wages. Those comparisons are, for now at least, stretched. An estimated 11 million working days were lost in 1979, a time when trade-union membership was almost twice what it is today, according to U.K. government statistics. Currently around 6.4 million workers are members of a union in the U.K.
A walkout among the U.K.’s ambulance drivers would be the first in 30 years.

Still the breadth of the current planned walkouts is on a level not seen in Britain for years. About 100,000 civil servants have voted to strike across different government departments. Thousands of British nurses will go on strike on Dec. 15 and Dec. 20 after the government refused to meet their pay demands, the Royal College of Nursing union said, in what would be its first strike in its more than 100-year history. More than 10,000 ambulance workers across England and Wales will strike on Dec. 21 and Dec. 28 in a dispute over pay and working conditions, the GMB union said.

Teachers across Scotland recently carried out strike action for the first time in almost 40 years after talks on a pay deal broke down. There will also be rolling train strikes across the nation around the festive period.

Some strikes have proved successful for workers. Criminal barristers in England and Wales accepted a 15% pay rise in October.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-k-braces ... malertNEWS

Appeared in the December 10, 2022, print edition as 'U.K. Braces for Major Holiday Strikes'.

[Doka]

We are going to go through hell, no doubt, but I think (My opinion) Europe will not anywhere close to it's current form.

Clause and Soros are reaking hell not only on the people, but they are craping on their own Empires.

England has the Monarchy thats getting megaharried, big time, they will be lucky to get jobs cleaning out barn stalls. But still causing great damage to the not so bright Monarchy if not it's fall. I think it will just become an expense that they can no longer afford.
They have set their doom, along with other nations by "Going Big Time Geen"

Plus the fact that it has been under a prophetic warning for quite some time. Something my "Instinct" will not allow me to tatally dis-reguard.