Written by Sachin Ravikumar and Farooq Suleiman
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s rail workers kicked off the new year with a week-long strike on Tuesday, delaying the return to work of millions of commuters in the latest episode of labor unrest in the country.
Britain is going through its worst wave of labor unrest since Margaret Thatcher was in power in the 1980s, amid soaring inflation after more than 10 years of stagnant wage growth, leaving many workers unable to make ends meet monthly.
Frequent rail strikes have paralyzed Britain’s network in recent months, while nurses, airport staff, paramedics and postal workers have also joined the fray, demanding higher wages to keep up with inflation, which hit a 40-year high of 10.7% in November.
Teachers will strike next week in Scotland.
“Due to the strike, rail services will be significantly reduced until Sunday 8th January,” said Network Rail, a UK rail infrastructure management company.
“Trains will be busier and more likely to start later and finish earlier, and in some places there will be no service at all.”
The UK government has announced that it cannot give public sector employees a raise equal to inflation, meaning there is no end in sight to what has been dubbed a new “winter of discontent”, a reference to the trade union struggles that gripped the UK in the late 1970s.
According to a YouGov poll published in December, two-thirds of Britons support a nurses’ strike. Most of those surveyed believe that the government is the main culprit in the situation, and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak may suffer if the outage continues into 2023.
Mick Lynch, president of the rail union RMT, said the government appeared content to see the strikes continue.
“All parties involved know what needs to be done to reach an agreement, but the government is blocking it,” Lynch told the BBC.
The British government has called on unions to return to the negotiating table, recognizing that strikes are seriously affecting businesses that depend on workers, such as cafes and pubs in the city centre.
“The only way to get a deal is for the unions and employers to sit at the negotiating table and not in the picket line, and that’s what I want to happen,” British Transport Secretary Mark told Radio Times Harper’s.
(Writing by Kate Holton; Editing by Janet Lawrence; Editing in Spanish by Dario Fernandez)
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