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Britain is facing a winter of strikes, as industrial action on the railways spreads to the health service and other key sectors of the economy. The tide of discontent is such that more than 1m working days could be lost to disputes in December, the most since 1989, during Margaret Thatcher’s final years in power.
With inflation at its highest rate in 41 years amid a living standards crisis, it’s not hard to see why workers are pushing for better pay. Coming after the worst decade for average wage growth since the Napoleonic Wars, which included deep real-change pay cuts for many in the public sector, it is even less surprising.
It is against this backdrop that Rishi Sunak’s government is exploring options to crack down on striking workers. However, it is a high-risk strategy that could come to define the prime minister’s approach to working people, at a time when there is generally broad public support for those on strike.
Despite this, for all the headlines, Britain is not facing a carbon-copy of the winter of discontent of 1979, which contributed to the fall of James Callaghan’s Labor government.
Strike action has so far been limited to pockets of the economy and particularly the public sector. This largely reflects the halving of union membership from a peak of more than 13m in the decade of flared trousers and Ford Capris that followed years of tough laws to curb union power.
It seems that strikes this winter are widespread, with the public sector struggling to cope, but it is unlikely that Britain will experience the scale of the 1970s for this reason. 741,000 working days have been lost so far this year. The scale of industrial action is significant, with another 1m days likely to be lost in December. However, it pales in comparison to the post-war high in September 1979 when more than 12m days were lost. That in turn was also a blip compared to 1926, when 162m people lost their lives during the entire year of the general strike.
Union membership in the hospitality trade, IT sector and office workers and estate agents is less than 10%. However, it is higher among women, partly reflecting the gender divide in sectors of the economy where unionization remains high – such as education and healthcare. Union leaders believe this could make it more difficult for the prime minister to paint striking workers as terrorists reminiscent of the 1970s.
The economic context can also make the government’s task of dealing with trade union demands more difficult.
With the energy shock of Russia’s war in Ukraine pushing inflation above 11%, the highest rate in 41 years, British households are expected to take the biggest hit to their incomes since records began in 1956. The Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast suggests eight years of progress. will be abolished, effectively returning living standards to 2013 levels. Failure to maintain wages for the majority rather than the few unionized workers is a crisis.
On top of this, public sector workers are taking a beating. Official figures show that wage growth has fallen by the largest degree on record in the private sector, with wage growth of just 2.2% – significantly below the private sector’s 6.6%, and inflation in double digits.
It would be hard for Sunak to argue that a crackdown on workers’ rights, rather than higher wages, could help reduce record NHS waiting lists and ambulance waiting times, or help fulfill a Conservative manifesto promise to hire thousands more nurses, teachers. Police
Vacancies in the NHS in England alone are at a record high of more than 133,000, while anecdotal evidence suggests some care workers have swapped their jobs for higher pay in Amazon warehouses.
The government has sought to argue that large pay rises are unaffordable, with public borrowing near post-war highs, a national debt at historically high levels and warnings that putting more money in workers’ pockets risks fueling persistent inflationary pressures.
Although alive to these risks, many economists are skeptical, pointing to rising energy costs and food contributions rather than workers’ salaries. These included Bank of England rate-setter Swati Dhingra, who said Britain was far from seeing a “wage-price spiral”, in which workers demanding higher wages lead companies to put their prices down.
Unlike in the 1970s, industrial action today is a response to, rather than a driver of, high inflation.
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