UK: strike expands from doctors to include other workers

After the release of the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt’s budget on Wednesday, teachers, London Underground drivers and civil servants by the hundreds of thousands joined doctors in striking.

Inflation hit workers in all sectors, including white-collar workers. UK university officials and BBC journalists also joined the multisectoral strike The unions ASLEF (Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen) and Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) in the capital London left the subway paralyzed. The 130,000 civil servants from various government departments, along with the country’s Border Force.

Not close. 10 Downing Street, workers were chanting outside Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s office: “What do we want? 10 percent, when we want it? Now!”

What are workers in the UK worried about?

Unions representing public sector workers are at loggerheads with the government seeking wage increases they say are needed to offset inflation. The government, for its part, says they are unaffordable and will further fuel inflation.

The world’s sixth-largest economy has endured a turbulent few years amid the shocks of government austerity, Brexit, COVID-19 and double-digit inflation amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In addition to wages not keeping up with inflation, workers cite conditions, job security and pensions as one of their main concerns.

The British Medical Association said junior doctors had effectively taken a 26% pay cut since 2009.

Hunt, whose formal title is Chancellor of the Exchequer, became minister last year after former Prime Minister Liz Truss’ mini-budget, which proved politically disastrous and relied heavily on unfunded plans for tax cuts. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, himself a former chancellor, kept Hunt in office.

Increased industrial action in much of the public sector

PCS civil servants union general secretary Mark Serwotka said it was scandalous that some government workers were forced to accept government benefits because of their low wages.

The cascade of increasingly severe attacks has also reached a tipping point, he added.

“I think for the first time in years, opinion polls show that there is a lot of support for strikes,” Serwotka told AFP.

The two-day teachers’ strike is expected to affect all UK schools.

More and more public sector workers have dropped tools more frequently in recent months in the UK, nurses went on strike in what their unions said was the first time in history at the start of the labor dispute.

ar/msh (AFP, Reuters)