Staff outside the entrances to Waterloo tube station in London on August 18, 2022, the day of the strike (AFP / CARLOS JASSO)
The UK will see a fresh spate of massive strikes in transport, postal and port services from Thursday, the biggest strike movement in decades, which has been going on since the beginning of the summer amid inflation engulfing Britain’s spending power.
In the middle of the school holidays, only every fifth train in the country ran on Thursday. Tens of thousands of rail workers have been ordered to stop work by the RMT, TSSA and Unite unions, and Network Rail, the operator of the public network, has urged users to avoid using the mode of transport.
Passengers defying the injunction were sympathetic nonetheless, while across-the-board fare increases, which last month topped 10% across the English Channel for the first time in more than 40 years, are devaluing Brits’ wages.
“I’ll be very late, that’s for sure,” tells AFP Usama Sarda, a dentist in his 30s, traveling from London’s Euston station to a wedding in the north of the country. But the strike “is right because inflation is at an all-time high right now,” he said.
Railway workers “are people like me,” says Greg Ellwood, a 26-year-old consultant who was crossing at Leeds station in northern England. “We are all trying to make a living and make ends meet. I have all the sympathy in the world for her,” he says.
The biggest rail strike movement since 1989, at the end of the Thatcher years, could “go on indefinitely,” RMT general secretary Mick Lynch warned on Thursday, with work stoppages by rail workers raging in spasms since June over a lack of strike wage agreements.
– “Basically underpaid” –
“British workers are fundamentally underpaid,” adds the unionist, for whom the movement “will not be broken” and, on the contrary, could extend to “any industry”.
In fact, movements in the country are increasing. London’s transport network will be almost completely paralyzed on Friday and will remain severely disrupted throughout the weekend, while another day of train strikes is scheduled for Saturday.
Although staff on Eurostar, the train that uses the Channel Tunnel, are not directly affected by the strike, the operator has also had to reduce the number of its services as a result of the reduction in timetables on all UK routes
Waterloo train station in London on August 18, 2022 strike day (AFP / CARLOS JASSO)
Dockers at the port of Felixstowe (east England) – the country’s largest cargo port – start an eight-day strike on Sunday, threatening to paralyze much of the country’s freight traffic.
Postal workers, employees of the telecom operator BT, Amazon dealers, but also criminal defense lawyers and garbage collectors have left or intend to do so.
The moves could continue beyond the summer and spread to education or even healthcare officials, where Unite has tackled “miserable” salary offers of 4%.
Everywhere the buzzword is the same: workers are demanding wage increases in line with inflation, which hit 10.1% over a year in July and could top 13% in October.
– Ukraine, Covid and Brexit –
Price drivers are in particular gas prices, on which the country is heavily dependent and which are skyrocketing in the wake of the war in Ukraine, but also disruptions in supply chains and labor shortages in the wake of Covid-19 and Brexit.
Purchasing power is being eroded by price increases at a record pace, demonstrating “the vital need (…) to defend the value of workers’ compensation,” Sharon Graham, general secretary of the Unite union, assures the country’s top trade unions in a press release.
Redcurrants for sale at Borough Market in London on August 17, 2022 (AFP / CARLOS JASSO)
However, some strikes were averted after satisfactory offers of compensation at the last minute, notably at a fueling company at Heathrow Airport or British Airways ground staff.
In rail, negotiations with the industry’s multitude of private operators are deadlocked, according to unions, who also rejected an 8% salary offer from Network Rail which they say is conditional on massive layoffs.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, who refused to take part directly in the discussions, is singled out by the organizations and accused of not giving the companies enough negotiating mandate.
Another reason for the unions’ anger: the government has just changed the law to allow the use of agency workers to replace strikers.