Union leaders have vowed to carry on the fight for better wages and working conditions ahead of the first anniversary of the biggest wave of industrial action seen in Britain for three decades.
This coming Wednesday will mark 12 months since members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union staged their first stoppage in a dispute over pay, jobs and conditions.
That dispute, which a year on remains unresolved, is regarded by unions as the start of the most significant uprising by UK workers since 1989 – a year with many of the same economic difficulties as today, when interest rates were rising, inflation had surged and demonstrators took to the streets to protest against Margaret Thatcher’s poll tax.
Since 21 June 2022, almost every area of the public and private sector has been disrupted by staff battling to ensure their pay keeps place with the fastest rate of inflation since the early 1980s. Barristers, teachers, nurses, junior doctors, university lecturers and civil servants in almost every government department – from driving examiners to rural food inspectors – have all gone on strike.
In the private sector, the GMB union has organised warehouse strikes at Amazon, as staff push for union recognition, and Royal Mail has been repeatedly hit by industrial action, while lorry drivers and factory workers have either joined in the stoppages or threatened to do so.
Over 3.7m working days were lost between June 2022 and April 2023, according to latest available data from the Office for National Statistics, the highest for any 11-month period since May 1990, when 4.8m working days were lost.
On 1 February alone, 100,000 civil servants at 124 government departments all stopped work. While some groups have settled and called off strikes, many key workers have not.
Faced with a cost of living crisis and inflation running at over 10%, and food prices that have doubled, unions have been turning down government offers that have typically ranged from 3% to 5%.
On Saturday the National Education Union vowed to bring more coordinated strikes that will shut many schools completely in July. Representatives are calling for negotiations with the government to resume, saying they will only strike as a “last resort”.
“This first anniversary marks an important milestone in the UK’s contemporary industrial relations history,” said Peter Turnbull, professor of management and industrial relations at the University of Bristol Business School, in an interview with PA Media.
“More than three-quarters of the days lost came from transport, storage, information and communications, but daily life has also been affected by strikes in our schools and universities, the NHS and civil service.
“After the longest period of falling real wages since records began, pay has understandably dominated the headlines, but the causes of these ongoing disputes run much deeper after years of austerity, consequent work intensification and falling standards of service provision. All strikes are eventually ‘settled’, but workers will remain unsettled by this prolonged period of industrial action for years to come.”
More than half a million NHS appointments, operations and procedures have been postponed in England as a result of strikes by health service staff.
The first mass walkout of nurses in history took place in mid-December, with ambulance workers, physiotherapists and other health workers following suit in subsequent weeks. More recently they have been joined by junior doctors from the British Medical Association.
Across the board, union leaders have attacked the government’s role in industrial disputes.
Mark Serwotka, of the Public and Commercial Services Union, said: “There is no doubt that the government is completely to blame, fuelled by an unprecedented cost of living crisis in which workers have been squeezed like never before.
“Ministers have been appalling. They assumed there would not be the stomach for a fight, but they made a catastrophic mistake.
The TUC general secretary, Paul Nowak, said the level of industrial action was unprecedented, and workers have decided they do not want to accept continued real-terms pay cuts.
He believes the government has “clearly been pulling the strings” of the rail dispute and thought the public would turn against striking unions, but there is no evidence of a public backlash.
Christina McAnea, of Unison, praised her NHS members, whose biggest strike action in decades “won the hearts of the public”.
“Our members braved hours of freezing weather to stand up for what’s right – not only for themselves, but for their colleagues and for the future of our public services.”
A government spokesperson said ministers wanted to ensure pay settlements were “fair, affordable for the taxpayer and reasonable” and that they allowed inflation to fall.
“Industrial action should always be a last resort. The government will continue to engage constructively with trade unions and is prepared to agree reasonable and affordable settlements if unions come to the table.”
