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| Workers in the United Kingdom have had enough of falling living standards. |
| Rail workers, journalists, lawyers, and postal workers have gone on strike in recent weeks to demand higher pay as inflation soars to its highest level in decades. |
| At least 155,000 workers are currently on strike, including staff at the country’s postal service, and engineers and call center workers for telecom provider BT (BTGOF). Two rail unions on Wednesday announced further strike action by 14,000 of their members later this month. |
| More strikes could be on the way this fall, threatening unprecedented disruption across a range of industries. Teachers, doctors and nurses are set to vote on strike action in the coming weeks. Unite and Unison — the country’s biggest unions with 2.7 million members in total — are calling for others to join them in synchronized action. |
| It is one of the most significant waves of industrial unrest the United Kingdom has seen since the “winter of discontent” in the late 1970s when rampant inflation pushed workers to stage mass walkouts. About 7.9 million working days were lost between November 1978 and February 1979, according to the Office for National Statistics. |
| Soaring prices and years of stagnant wages are the backdrop to this year’s disputes. Consumer price inflation hit a 40-year high of 10.1% in July. Forecasters at Citigroup said last week that inflation could shoot past 18% at the start of next year, and Goldman Sachs thinks it could even hit 22% if gas prices don’t fall soon. |
| Workers are already feeling the strain. Average real wages, which account for inflation, fell by 3% between April and June, compared with the same period last year. That was the biggest hit to spending power in more than 20 years. Real wages barely increased in the decade to 2020. |
| And average household energy bills — which have already risen 54% this year — are set to increase by another 80% to £3,549 ($4,124) in October. According to estimates by Auxilione, a research firm, average bills could hit £7,700 ($8,949) next April — equivalent to a £642 ($746) monthly bill. |
| The United Kingdom has “never seen [this] level of disruption across all sectors,” Chiara Benassi, an associate professor in comparative employment relations at King’s College London, told CNN Business. |
| In recent months, the cost-of-living crisis has acted as a “trigger” for widespread grievances that have been building up over a long period of time, she said. |
| "These strikes affect not only [what] we would say [are] manual occupations or low-skilled jobs that more evidently would struggle with the cost-of-living crisis, but also highly-skilled jobs like junior doctors, British Telecom engineers, barristers, academics, teachers,” Benassi said. |
| UK unemployment was 3.8% between April and June this year, ONS data shows. That’s its lowest level in more than 50 years. There was also one unemployed person for every job vacancy — a record low. |
| "It means that many workers are in work and they are in a good position to ask for [a pay] increase. They cannot be easily replaced [at a macro level],” said Manuela Galetto, associate professor of employment relations at the University of Warwick’s Business School. |
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