Days lost to strikes rose to 417,000 in October 2022, the highest level in more than a decade although this followed a historically low rate of strike action.
It is important to note that the resurgence of industrial action has been across both the private and public sectors, with strike action securing above-inflation settlements for a range of workers in the private sector, including BT, bus companies, the docks and offshore installations. Pay for public service workers lags well behind those in the private sector, but more importantly reflects 12 years of pay freezes or minimal increases for health and social care workers, teachers, Royal Mail staff, firefighters, rail workers, civil servants and university workers. UK workers have experienced the longest pay squeeze in more than 200 years and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) calculates that average pay is worth £85 a month less than in 2008. In conditions of record inflation, something had to give, and the myopia and timidity of pay review bodies has been exposed. Despite the protestations of government spokespersons, soaring inflation has been driven by profit and could not possibly have been the result of wage rises.
The character of today’s strikes is distinct from that of the strikes in the 1970s. Firstly, there is a changed backdrop marked by the increase in social and economic inequality and huge disparities in pay between the majority of workers and the minority of very senior managers, and the refusal of governments to redistribute concentrations of wealth and profit through taxation. The gap between the top and median pay in the UK’s top companies has widened since the 1980s, with the OECD reporting that the UK has the second-highest income inequality of G7 countries. Wages as a proportion of the value of Gross Domestic Product (the labour share) were over 64 per cent in 1976, with the remainder going to companies and their shareholders; the proportion going to workers has fallen to around 54 per cent in recent years, despite stagnation in productivity. Current strikes are thus taking place at a time when workers can contrast their declining real pay with unrestrained rewards to senior managers and chief executives.
The second difference, since the so-called ‘winter of discontent’, is the way that strikes, ostensibly over pay, have extended to embrace public sector workers’ dissatisfaction over the services they are able to provide. Such frustration has become particularly acute in a context of severe staff shortages and harrowing experiences of working on the front line during COVID-19 that now appear devalued. The undermining of professionalism and dignity in work is reflected in industrial action by barristers, doctors and nurses, teachers and university workers. Many recognise the encroachment of managerialism whereby senior managers, divorced from service delivery, overrule professional expertise and experience in pursuit of performance targets and budgetary constraints. In the bitter strike by British Airways cabin crew in 2009–11, workers saw themselves as the ‘guardians’ of a service that had been gradually eroded by cost-cutting and felt their professionalism and strong commitment to the company was being degraded. Such sentiments are evident among the diverse groups of workers now taking strike action, reflecting the hollowing out, marketisation and privatisation of UK public services, with many in deep crisis. While pay is important, strikes are multicausal and reflect widespread frustrations – an emotional explosion of discontent and, often, liberation.
Thirdly, and linked to the crisis in public services, is the changed composition of trade union membership. The rise in female employment and their predominance in public services means women now represent well over half (57 per cent) of trade union members, up from 45 per cent in 1995, albeit against the backdrop of a longer-term decline in overall membership, although that downward trajectory is now being countered by increased recruitment. The female membership rate is 26 per cent compared to 20 per cent for men. At the same time, Black or Black British workers are more likely than other groups to be trade union members (29 per cent compared to 23 per cent for the White ethnic group), with Black or Black British women most likely to be union members. Additionally, while industrial relations scholarship has often precluded activism by so-called precarious workers, Work in the Global Economy has documented the mobilisation of casualised labour in construction and of migrant and young workers in new independent unions. The reconfigured composition of UK unions was presaged by the BA cabin crew workers’ strike, where crew evoked the 1984–85 miners’ strike, but rejected a version of class and militancy based on a perceived historical legacy of class as White, heterosexual and male. Their union (BASSA) legitimated an inclusive worker interest that is reflected in images of current strikes (although not necessarily in union leaderships).
Finally, the legal context of strikes has been transformed, severely constraining UK workers’ right to strike with bans on secondary action, the imposition of ballot thresholds and minute technical criteria for ballots that mean they are open to legal challenge. Despite these barriers, the high proportions of members voting for strike action is a notable feature of the new wave of industrial conflict. This week’s parliamentary consent to the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill reflects a further attack on the right to strike and encouragement to pernicious employers to sack union members attempting to exercise their democratic right. The government’s own impact assessment of the bill (when it covered only the transport section) conceded that it was unlikely to have any other outcome than to further sour industrial relations at organisational and national levels. The stakes for this government and for the trade union movement and workers currently engaged in action are high.
Sian Moore is Professor in Employment Relations and Human Resource Management and Director of the Centre for Research on Work and Employment (CREW) at the University of Greenwich. She is co-Editor in Chief of Work in the Global Economy published by Bristol University Press and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. Her work focusses upon gender and class.
Safak Tartanoglu Bennett is Research Fellow at Centre for Research on Work and Employment (CREW) and Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU) at the University of Greenwich. She is Editorial Assistant of Work in the Global Economy. Her research interests lie in the changing nature of labour markets and employment relations with a particular focus on precarious work and vulnerable workers.
Work in the Global Economy is available on Bristol University Press Digital. Follow the journal on Twitter at @wgejournal.
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