Every time the UK heads into an economic, political, social or existential crisis, it turns to the Richard III of Shakespeare, although the season of the year varies. The “winter of discontent” (winter of our discontent) with which the wildcat strikes that led to the triumph of Margaret Thatcher at the end of the seventies were baptized, was last year the “autumn of discontent”, when Boris Johnson ran out of trucks to refuel gas stations at the end of the pandemic. And what comes next is called the “summer of discontent.” The strike of the maintenance and signaling personnel of the public railways – around 40,000 workers throughout the country – is called for this Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
The reality is that, with very reduced minimum services and absolutely compressed schedules, the chaos will last throughout the week, and both the Government and the unions have already advised the millions of people who depend on the train to get to their work looking for alternative transportation or working from home. The strike affects NetworkRail, the public company that manages a large part of the stations, as well as the railway network, together with 13 other private operators. Between all of them they cover practically all the connections of the island. It will be the largest strike in the sector since the 1989 stoppages, which affected the entire country and also responded to a strong wage dispute.
“The railway companies have proposed wage increases well below the current rate of inflation, to which must be added that wages have been frozen for several years,” said the general secretary of the Railway, Maritime and Transport Workers on Monday. (RMT, in its acronym in English), Mick Lynch, at the head of the negotiations so far failed. “By express mandate of the Government, the companies also intend to cut thousands of jobs and have been unable to ensure that they will not carry out forced redundancies,” said Lynch.
In principle, during the three days in which the strike has been called, some 4,500 of the 20,000 services that are available daily will work, but the cut in hours (from 07:30 to 18:30), which will paralyze well in advance essential preparation tasks, guarantees that the chaos extends throughout the week. Maintenance workers on the London Underground, who depend on the municipal company Transport For London (TfL, in its acronym in English), have also approved a strike call for this Tuesday, which will contribute to complicate things much more in the metropolis.
Inflation
Economic forecasts predict that the United Kingdom may end the year with inflation close to 11%. Currently it is already around 9%. The governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, was the first to issue the warning, last February, of the risk involved, in his opinion, in responding to the claims of public workers. “We hope to see some restraint in the salary negotiation process, or this will all get out of our control,” Bailey said then.
The salary increase offer from the railway companies is around 2%. The Johnson government, however, which sold the consequence of Brexit of suppressing the freedom of movement of people that belonging to the EU meant as a victory for British workers, had spent months promising a new economy “with higher wages and greater skills”. ”.
Faced with the threat of a mass strike, the Johnson government has resorted to aggressive language. The transport minister, Grant Shapps, warned the unions last Thursday, when the strike began to be perceived as inevitable, that they were at risk “of losing their jobs”. “These strikes are not just an attempt to derail the reforms needed to secure the future of the rail network, they are designed to cause damage at the worst of times, and the union has inflicted a tremendous blow on itself. Shapps said.
Both the union leaders, who see behind the failure in the negotiations “the dead hand” of the Government, as well as the Labor opposition, accuse the Johnson Executive of provoking, from its passivity, a conflict that suits it politically. “They want to bring the country to a total blockade to feed the division. Instead of turning, during the past week, to influence the negotiations, they have refused to speak with the unions or with the companies, ”Starmer charged this Sunday.
Workers from other sectors will join the “industrial action” (the euphemism used by the media and politicians to refer to the strike), such as teachers, public health personnel or even criminal lawyers on duty. Everyone has been protesting low wages for years now, which galloping inflation threatens to pulverize. “At the moment it is the workers themselves who are organizing among themselves,” said Frances O’Grady, the deputy general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), the main confederation of the United Kingdom, on Monday. . “And they do it not in response to a deliberate strategy, but because millions of them face low wages, insecurity and cuts. That is why they have no choice but to vote for the strike”, she added.
The playwright Michael Frayn ironically, years ago, that “the British are capable of defending to the death the right of a worker to fight for his job, but they do not tolerate a strike”.
The unions and the Labor opposition cannot avoid the suspicion that Johnson, in really low hours among members of his party and among his voters, would have no qualms about imitating the legendary Thatcher and deploying a speech and heavy-handed measures against the strikes, when the degree of boredom was sufficient to regain popular support.
Chaos at Heathrow airport
The chaos experienced in British airports during the holidays half term (the bimonthly week of rest that the schools have) from the beginning of June has not disappeared. Hundreds of flights were canceled then, and thousands of passengers grounded, due to a lack of staff from UK carriers. The thousands of flight and airport staff cuts during the pandemic have not been replenished. This weekend, mountains of suitcases blocked at London’s Heathrow airport revealed the labor shortages in the sector. The port authorities have asked the airlines on Monday to cancel a large part of their scheduled flights, in order to buy time and put a little order in a chaotic situation.
The company of low cost Easyjet has also announced this Monday its plans to eliminate about 11,000 of the flights scheduled for this summer. The lack of personnel has led him to design operations with a capacity of 90%, compared to those of three years ago at this time. They will offer alternative routes and dates to customers who have already made their reservations.
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