London:
Up to half a million British teachers, civil servants, machinists and university lecturers will strike on Wednesday in the largest concerted action in a generation that the government says will cause widespread disruption.
The massive strikes have closed schools, the army is on standby to help at Britain’s borders and rail services have been suspended across much of the country.
Union leaders estimate up to 500,000 people will take part, the highest number in at least a decade, and there will be demonstrations against a planned new law to curb strikes in some sectors, a proposal they say will further poison relations.
“After years of brutal pay cuts, nurses, teachers and millions of other civil servants have seen their living standards decimated — and will face further wage woes,” said Paul Nowak, secretary general of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), the union’s umbrella group.
“Instead of coming up with new ways to attack the right to strike, ministers should get pay raises across the economy – starting with a decent pay rise for workers across the public sector.”
The government says there will be “mitigations” but the strikes will have a significant impact.
“We are sure that this will disrupt people’s lives, which is why we think that negotiations rather than picket lines are the right approach,” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s spokesman told reporters.
With inflation at over 10% – the highest level in four decades – Britain has seen a wave of strikes from health and transport workers to Amazon warehouse workers and Royal Mail postal workers.
They are demanding wage increases above inflation to cover skyrocketing food and utility bills that they say have left them feeling stressed, undervalued and struggling to make ends meet.
On Wednesday, some 300,000 teachers will take action, together with 100,000 civil servants from more than 120 government departments and tens of thousands of university teachers and railway workers.
Next week, nurses, paramedics, paramedics, emergency call handlers and other health personnel will stage more strikes, while firefighters also supported a nationwide strike this week.
‘MOST DAYS 30 YEARS LOST’
More days were lost to union action between June and November than in six months in more than 30 years, according to official data.
An Ipsos poll released on Wednesday suggested the public was divided on the multi-pronged strike action, with 40% supporting the move and 38% opposed.
Sunak’s government has so far taken a hard line on public sector strikes, saying that giving in to demands for large wage increases would only fuel inflation.
But now that ruling Conservatives are some 25 percentage points behind the opposition Labor Party in polls, the union action adds to Sunak’s political woes, and polls show the public thinks the government has mishandled the strikes.
So far the economy has not taken a major hit from the union action, with the cost of the strikes in the eight months to January estimated by consultancy the Center for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) at around £1.7 billion (2. 09 billion dollars). or about 0.1% of projected GDP.
It estimated the impact of the teachers’ strikes at around £20 million a day.
However, with weak public and employer confidence and the economy in recession, the strikes contributed to a sense of gloom in the UK economy.
“Unresolved labor disputes are negatively impacting growth at a time when a recession is already imminent,” said CEBR economist Karl Thompson.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)
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