ENGLAND — Through Wednesday, more than 500,000 British workers are expected to walk off the job in support of unions from a variety of industries engaged in labor disputes over wages and working conditions.
They include the 300,000 English teachers who, according to the National Education Union, have seen at least a 23% real-terms pay cut since 2010, the teachers in Scotland who are represented by two unions, the 100,000 civil servants who work for more than 100 different government agencies, such as the driving instructors, coastguards, and Department of Work and Pensions employees, 70,000 university employees, such as lecturers and security personnel, and the 100,000 or so train and bus drivers.
Since a dispute over public sector pay in 2011, when more than a million workers are thought to have taken industrial action, there has not been such extensive strike activity.
Numerous workers will set up hundreds of picket lines and perform rallies, while tens of thousands of schools will be closed or only partially open.
Demands vary by the union but generally include pension reform, no reductions in redundancy terms, and inflation-beating pay increases, including to make up for historical real-terms wage declines. The NEU is requesting a pay increase above inflation and claims that the teaching profession is in a "crisis" as a result of workers leaving the field.
bill, which tries to impose minimum service standards in some sectors and allows for the firing of some employees for refusing to report for duty on strike days, was passed by the lower house of Parliament on Tuesday. This is another issue that will be the subject of protests.
The bill has been deemed "wrong, impracticable, and very certainly illegal" by the Trades Union Congress.
Most unions undertake multiple-day strikes, while others, like the train industry, do it across several months. Wednesday's planning has been overseen byThe unions planned a day of widespread walkouts to make a statement.
The National Health Service's ambulance drivers and nurses recently went on strike, demanding not only a pay increase but also better working conditions due to a lack of workers.
Firefighters have voted in favor of further strike action, and postal workers have also been on strike.
Between August and October, the public sector's average pay, excluding bonuses, increased by 2.7% as inflation surpassed 10%. National figures show that in contrast to a 6.9% pay increase in the private sector.
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