Many schools closed, trains stopped, ticket offices lowered in certain administrations… The United Kingdom experienced its most massive day of strikes in a decade on Wednesday, due to the massive inflation that fueled the economic crisis. On the eve of Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s first 100 days in power, up to half a million Britons are being called out to demand better wages.
The TUC union central warned that it would be “the biggest day of strikes since 2011” with the participation of teachers for the first time in several months of social movements. “We are on strike because in the last ten years our real wages have gone down. Some of our members, even if they work, have to go to food banks,” Graham said angrily on a picket line in London outside an employment agency. .
Early in the morning, London’s King’s Cross station was unusually quiet, with the rail workers’ strike preventing many people from getting to work. “I want to go to Leeds but there is no direct train,” worries Edward, 45, an executive at a technology company. While Kate Lewis, a 50-year-old charity worker, considers herself “lucky” to have a train home. She says that she “gets” the strikers. “We are all in the same boat. All affected by inflation.”
parent support
Several thousand schools are closed at the request of the teachers’ union NEU, forcing parents to stay home to care for their children. But several parent-teacher organizations have issued a joint statement saying they “support” the movement, pointing to “the consequences of years of underfunding” in schools. Education Minister Gillian Keegan said she was “disappointed” and “very concerned” by this move, calling it “economically inconsistent” to grant the requested wage increases.
“We said that we will study future salaries, we will look at the workload and the flexibility that teachers ask for,” as well as the problems of hiring teachers, he defended this Wednesday morning on Sky News.
Despite the border police strike, London’s Heathrow airport is “fully operational” on Wednesday morning, a spokesman said, recalling that soldiers have been deployed to make up for the absence of the strikers. “I really would like nothing more… than to have a magic wand and pay everyone more,” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said during a visit to health workers on Monday. But according to him, wage increases would fuel inflation and further damage public finances.
In all sectors, strikers are demanding wages in line with inflation, which has been in excess of 10% for months, pushing millions of Britons into poverty. And according to the latest IMF forecasts, the country should be the only major economy to suffer a recession this year, with its GDP contracting by 0.6%. The confrontation is also related to working conditions, pensions or the Government’s willingness to limit the right to strike and the TUC is organizing several demonstrations in the country on Wednesday to defend it.
“untenable” position
The move has been going on since spring. Since last June, 1.6 million business days have been “lost”, according to the National Statistics Office. If hopes of progress are perceived in the lane, a new strike is scheduled for Friday, while the firefighters voted in favor of a first strike in twenty years. Nurses and paramedics will also be on strike again in February. British customs officers stationed in France announced on Wednesday that they will be on strike over the February holidays.
“The government’s position is untenable. It cannot sit on a growing and unprecedented strike movement,” reacted the general secretary of the PCS administration union, Mark Serwotka, on Sky News, calling for “a much more realistic attitude.”
Source: BFM TV
