UK braces for biggest strike in years over holiday period | Daily News Byte

On Friday, around 115,000 Royal Mail employees walked off the job, the first of six strike days planned before Christmas that will disrupt postal services across the UK.

The labor conflict underscores the challenge for governments across Europe as inflation reaches its highest level in decades due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has pushed up energy prices and added to pressure from supply-chain disruptions from the pandemic. Governments and companies say most of the inflationary impact should start to ease in the coming months and warn that big pay rises could boost inflation. Unions argue that workers face a cost-of-living crisis and cannot afford to see their inflation-adjusted wages fall.

The situation is particularly bad in the UK, which has the second-highest inflation rate in Europe after Germany and is facing a recession that economists expect to last a year or perhaps two. According to the independent budget watchdog Office for Budget Responsibility, disposable household income adjusted for inflation is set to fall 7% over the next two fiscal years, the largest decline on record since the 1950s. The UK had the third-highest inflation rate of the Group of Seven in October, after Germany and Italy, according to figures from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

For months, trade unions have been locked in a fierce battle with employers and the British government as they look to boost wage offers they say are well below the current 11.1% pace of inflation. Average pay growth for the UK private sector was 6.6% in July to September 2022, compared with 2.2% for the public sector, according to the UK’s Office for National Statistics.

Workers from UK trade unions, including the State Health Service, teachers, postal staff and firefighters, are striking over pay rises. Andy Wren/EPA/Shutterstock (3), Phil Noble/Reuters

“One last thing [workers] want to take strike action, but the government has left them no choice,” said Rachel Harrison, national secretary of the GMB union, one of the country’s largest unions, representing workers from all sectors of the economy, including paramedics.

Some unions estimate that more than a million working days will be lost to strike action this year, potentially hitting levels not seen since the end of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s term in power, which was marked by frequent clashes with labor unions.

“Whereas in the past it was possible to get public opinion against strikers, these days people are much more sympathetic,” says Richard Hyman, professor of industrial relations at the London School of Economics. “If the government wants to toughen it up, things can get more serious.” An Ipsos poll in November found that 59% of Britons support a strike by nurses.

Mr. Hyman expects the strike to be the largest in at least two decades.

Until now, the UK government has tried to resist union calls for inflation-adjusted wages, saying the country’s finances cannot take the strain. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has already announced spending cuts and tax hikes as the government finally begins to reduce its debt in the coming years.

“If union leaders continue to be unreasonable, it is my duty to take action to protect lives and livelihoods,” Mr Sunak said on Wednesday, adding that he was planning to introduce legislation to force minimum service levels in public services. Ambulance drivers have said they will only respond to life-and-death emergencies such as heart attacks or strokes, leaving open the possibility that other incidents such as broken hips could leave patients waiting in agony. Negotiations are ongoing to avoid this strike.

Critics say the government has not done enough to avoid disruption. “He should sit down at the table and sort these issues out,” said Labor Party leader Keir Starmer.

The industrial disputes are drawing comparisons to Britain’s so-called winter of discontent in the late 1970s, when the country suffered mass shutdowns and rolling blackouts as workers pushed for better wages. Those comparisons, for now at least, are stretched. An estimated 11 million working days were lost in 1979, when trade-union membership was almost double what it is today, according to UK government figures. Currently around 6.4 million workers in the UK are union members

Yet the breadth of the current planned walkouts is at a level not seen in Britain for years. About 100,000 government employees have voted on strike in various government departments. Thousands of British nurses will go on strike on December 15 and December 20 after the government refused to meet their pay demands, the Royal College of Nursing Union said, in what would be its first strike in its 100-year history. More than 10,000 ambulance workers across England and Wales will strike on December 21 and 28 in a dispute over pay and working conditions, the GMB union said.

Teachers in Scotland recently took strike action for the first time in almost 40 years after talks over pay deals broke down. There will also be rolling train strikes across the country around the festive period.

Some strikes have proved successful for workers. Criminal barristers in England and Wales accepted a 15% pay rise in October.

Write to Max Colchester at Max.Colchester@wsj.com