UK strike wave opens crisis for Rishi Sunak – 12/14/2022 – World

This December, following the Advent calendar, is called the countdown to Advent. Christmas Traditionally decorating European homes, the British have another agenda to follow carefully Public service strikes🇧🇷

After several stops between June and August, this Traffic was affected during the holiday seasonA new wave is hitting UK Since the beginning of the month, with no signs of abating in the coming weeks, with anniversaries. Each day, a different faction pledges to cross its arms.

However, services are now interrupted Goes beyond railway stations and airports🇧🇷 This Thursday (15), British nurses’ union the Royal College of Nursing has organized a 12-hour strike with up to 100,00,000 workers in England, Northern Ireland and Wales forecast to join. This is a first in the history of the college founded in 1916 – the second was already announced on Tuesday (20).

This category includes 115,000 employees of the Postal Service and 40,000 from the Railways, who planned various events throughout the month. Besides them, the workers Border control at airports and security agents on Eurostar, the rail line linking the United Kingdom to continental Europe. Next week, ambulance operators threaten to stop work.

Unions forecast that more than 1 million days will be lost to strikes this month, the most since July 1989, for every laid-off worker. In October, this number accumulated 417 thousand days – the highest since 2011.

The strikes, which have hit the public sector, are being called as a way to put pressure on the government for salary changes that exceed inflation, which was measured at 11.1% in October. A track record of over 40 years🇧🇷 Nursing Workers Union Asks 5% Above Inflation.

oh Prime Minister Rishi SunakFrom the Conservative Party, it argues that there is no condition for the public sector to give a rise above inflation. This results in more pressure on prices🇧🇷 The government is considering deputing members of the armed forces to drive ambulances to offset the disruption of essential services.

This Tuesday (13), the union leader called the government’s stance bellicose, after a last-ditch effort to reach an agreement that could call off the nurses’ strike. “I’ve asked several times to discuss salary and each time we’ve come back to the same thing — there’s no extra money on the table, they won’t discuss it. They just close their books and walk away,” Royal Pat Cullen said. College of Nursing.. The category promises to maintain activity in essential departments like intensive care and oncology.

Opposition Leader Keir Starmer said the nurses’ strike was a disgrace to the government. “All the Prime Minister has to do to prevent this is to open the doors and discuss salaries with them. Instead of showing leadershipHe is playing with people’s health”, he said in Parliament on Wednesday.

Susan Milner, Professor of European Politics and Society at the University of Bath sheet That moment sees the stakes hardening. “With the government accepting a general refusal, strike movements are likely to increase. They should not disappear overnight.”

A researcher of labor organizations, Milner says that unlike now, strikes recorded in recent decades had actual peaks limited to a few sectors at a time. “What we have now is the feeling of being a public sector It is a place of discontent“Because salary offers are much lower than inflation and average growth in the private sector,” he says. “It’s common, it’s new.”

The current strike wave is different from the one that entered UK history in the late 1970s during the “winter of discontent” – in September 1979, the number of days lost due to strikes exceeded 11 million. Encouraged with strictness of law By then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, it became more difficult for a union to strike. “But companies, like railroad workers, have adapted and learned how to work within the system,” Milner explains.

Perhaps this expertise is why Britons are so divided on supporting the rail strikes, while putting themselves more clearly on the side of first-time strike nurses and ambulances.

According to a YouGov poll on 6 and 7 December, 33% of Britons blamed the government for the rail strike, while 31% targeted the unions. As for health professionals, a majority (46%) felt that Sunak management was responsible for this situation. “From the outside, it looks like nurses have a better chance of putting pressure on the government,” Milner says.