by Sarah Young
LONDON (Reuters) – British nurses will strike this week, slamming already overwhelmed hospitals and piling pressure on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to quell the biggest wave of labor protests to hit the country in decades.
The shutdown comes as strikes hit railways and the postal service, airports brace for unrest and junior doctors, midwives and teachers prepare to vote on whether to stop, threatening further gridlock in an economy already expected to be in recession.
Unions are seeking double-digit wage increases to keep pace with inflation, which hit 11.1% in October, the highest in 41 years.
But the government has so far refused to budge on wages and is instead looking to tighten laws to stop some strikes, meaning there is no end in sight for what has been dubbed a new “winter of discontent”, a reference to the industrial battles that have broken out. in the UK between 1978 and 1979.
Strikes are increasing every day this month. The union estimates that more than a million working days will be lost in December, making it the worst month of outages since July 1989.
Unions say the pay rise offers on the table, which are around 4%, are not enough, as many workers have already gone without any real pay rise over the past decade. In many cases, the procedure also relates to working conditions.
The government hopes that expectations that inflation will start to decline from mid-2023 will help.
(Reporting by Sarah Young; Additional reporting by Natalie Thomas)
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