UK suffers worst year of strikes since 1989

LONDON, Feb 14 (Reuters) – The United Kingdom recorded the highest number of working days lost due to industrial disputes in more than 30 years in 2022, official data showed on Tuesday, as the cost crisis of life led the workers to go on strike. to demand higher wages.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has pointed out that last year almost 2.5 million working days were lost due to industrial action, the highest figure since 1989, when 4.1 million days had been lost.

With inflation at its highest level in four decades, workers in various sectors, from train drivers to teachers and healthcare workers, have called for strikes in recent months.

ONS data shows 843,000 strike days were lost in December alone, with Border Force personnel, some 100,000 nurses and thousands of paramedics among those who staged strikes the day before or during the Christmas period.

While some minor conflicts have been resolved, the more notorious ones show little sign of abating.

Up to half a million teachers, civil servants and train drivers went on strike earlier this month in the biggest shutdown of coordinated activity in a decade, and many unions have scheduled new strike days.

The UK government has so far refused to budge on public sector wages and is instead tightening legislation to make it harder to strike in key sectors.

He claims that the requested wage increases are unaffordable and that the corresponding inflation would only exacerbate the problem.

(Reporting by Kylie MacLellan; Editing by Kate Holton, Spanish editing by José Muñoz in the Gdansk newsroom)