Strikes have a common denominator, demanding better wages and against the Conservative government in the United Kingdom.
This Wednesday, a strike by drivers and station staff will shut down the London Underground, causing widespread disruption in the British capital. This strike is in addition to another strike called for by professors of sectors of young doctors who are members of the British Medical Association (BMA) who started their strike for a period of 72 hours.
Doctors just starting their careers in the NHS (British Health System) earn just £14 an hour. Unemployment in this sector, around 61,000 doctors, would cause an unprecedented “major disruption” to the NHS and affect the care of thousands of patients. Many hospitals in England have already postponed outpatient appointments or non-urgent operations ahead of the strike on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
About 133,000 workers who are members of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union are also expected to walk out on budget speech day March 15. In addition, a three-day strike of university workers, which includes teachers, researchers and library staff, has begun. On Thursday some train companies called a strike
Members of Aslef (the union of locomotive engineers and firefighters) and the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) workers union will strike for 24 hours on Budget Day in a dispute with the Conservative government over pensions and projected changes to the metro network’s workforce. The Aslev drivers’ strike is the first metro-wide union strike since 2015.
Some 10,000 RMT members will also strike, for the seventh time in London since March 2022. The union has warned Mayor of London Sadiq Khan that he must cancel the pension review and halt job cuts that are expected to put 600 fewer staff at stations.
These strikes come in the context of protests that have been going on for months. Public support for strikes continues in the UK, particularly with public services in decline, the cost of living crisis hitting everyone’s pockets, and living standards lower than they were a decade ago.
A Sky News poll in January showed that 63% of Britons strongly or somewhat supported strikes by health workers, and 49% supported broader public sector action.
While the Conservative government has argued that increasing wages to combat inflation would raise prices, strikes continue. In the face of this, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has proposed legislation attacking the right to strike in key areas of the public sector, including education and healthcare.
Governor Rishi Sunak is seeking to be tough in the negotiations and insists there is no money to grant the required pay increases. For example, in the health sector, it refused to increase its offer between 4.5% and 5%, while inflation rose to 14%. This explains why the strikes continue and have great impact, as was the case at the beginning of February with the largest strike in decades that brought together more than half a million workers against the government.
Despite the policy of union leaders that refuses to call for joint action by all sectors of the struggle and for an indefinite period of time until their demands are met, the workers continue to vote for new works day after day and in all the solidarity he felt.
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