Britain’s biggest strike action in decades continues. The UK has been experiencing a new episode of massive strikes since Thursday 18th August in many sectors, from transport to postal services to ports, to demand wage increases amid inflation at its highest level in 30 years.
With just one in five trains running in the country on Thursday, August 18, tens of thousands of rail workers have been ordered to stop work by several unions. The London Underground was almost paralyzed on Friday, with only “two lines” offering “limited service”. , according to a spokeswoman for public transport operator TfL, whose subways usually carry up to five million passengers.
Another day of rail strikes is planned for Saturday and rail workers’ movement could “continue indefinitely”, warned RMT union general secretary Mick Lynch, as there has been no collective agreement since the strikes began in June. The movement has already spread beyond the rail sector: Dockers at the country’s largest cargo port, Felixstowe, begin an eight-day strike on Sunday August 21, threatening to halt much of the country’s freight transport. 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.
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, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Price drivers are in particular the gas prices, which are skyrocketing with the war in Ukraine and on which the country is heavily dependent, but also the disruption of supply chains and the shortage of workers due to Covid-19 and Brexit.
In the rail sector, negotiations with the multitude of private operators are deadlocked, unions say. The latter rejected an 8 percent pay rise offer from Network Rail, which they say is conditional on massive layoffs. They also criticize the decision by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, who refused to take part directly in talks, to amend the law to allow contract workers to replace strikers.
For his part, the minister criticized the unions for rejecting reforms to modernize the railways and assured them that he could use force to enforce them. So said Liz Truss, the favorite to succeed Boris Johnson as Prime Minister on twitter “As Prime Minister, I will not allow our country to be blackmailed by militant unionists.” London’s Labor Mayor Sadiq Khan said he was “concerned that the government is deliberately pressuring [les syndicats] Strike in London”.