Britain grinds to a halt as a half-million workers go on strike

February 2, 2023 11:28 AM

London “A long-running dispute over pay and working conditions came to a head Wednesday, with hundreds of thousands of British workers taking part in what organizers said was the biggest day of industrial action in more than a decade.”
posted by Selena777 (41 comments total)

Good for them.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:59 AM on February 2, 2023 [33 favorites]

I hope the strikers prevail. The people of the UK are suffering badly at the hands of Russian agents in the Tory government.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:02 PM on February 2, 2023 [14 favorites]

First day of this term's academic strike here was yesterday. It'll be 18 days over the next 2 months. Teaching terms run Sept/Oct-Dec and Jan-Mar and are basically the only time the uni cares if we go on strike since it hammers "student experience". How successful it over those 18 days very much depends on the numbers who take the time off, since that many days make it impossible to catch up on teaching hours and leads to complaints about value for money and whether students are covering enough.

There was an interesting report at the end of last week that University of London (which takes in a number of major institutions: LSE, UCL, SOAS and more) had underlined to its academics that if you die on a strike day you won't get death in service benefits (typically your family get 3x annual salary lump sum + pension so a decent wedge). Which is a great incentive for not telling your institution you are striking till after the day you strike, which is totally legal. Most staff will tell students if they plan not to turn up for a lecture but they don't have to.
posted by biffa at 12:07 PM on February 2, 2023 [33 favorites]

Oh me, my elderly in-laws should be landing at Heathrow soon.

Sorry, in-laws, I do support a strike!
posted by Kitteh at 12:41 PM on February 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

The people of the UK are suffering badly at the hands of Russian agents in the Tory government.

There are certainly people in & adjacent to the current Tory cabinet who have taken funding and loans from Russians allied to Putin, and probably a few who are knowingly Russian assets as well as a bunch of useful idiots.

But this is the UK, and these are home-grown arseholes. Putin didn't invent white supremacy, toxic masculinity, wealth, entitlement, heteronormativity, sexism, Eton College or Margaret Thatcher. The British Empire fucked up everyone who came into contact with it in ways Putin could only dream of.

The strikes were provoked by the sort of elitism this country grew in its back garden; the elitism that says "Everything must be for my convenience and my profit. If you suffer, you mustn't do so where I can see it."
posted by Pallas Athena at 12:43 PM on February 2, 2023 [81 favorites]

If you suffer, you mustn't do so where I can see it.

I'm pretty sure some of them want to see the suffering.
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 12:55 PM on February 2, 2023 [28 favorites]

Solidarity forever.
posted by mhoye at 1:12 PM on February 2, 2023 [13 favorites]

academic strike

Sorry, not having a go at you in particular, but this is a pet peeve of mine--whenever university staff in the UK go on strike, the headlines and Twitter threads are always "lecturers" this and "academics" that, completely ignoring the thousands upon thousands of us non-academic staff (IT, librarians, etc.) who keep the teaching and research engines turning over. It gets old.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 2:12 PM on February 2, 2023 [45 favorites]

Considering the various anti-protest laws passed over the last few years in the UK, I'm not surprised to read in that article that the UK now has some of the toughest strike policies in Europe.
posted by many-things at 2:26 PM on February 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

Sorry, I actually only realised when i was voting in the ucu elections yesterday that there are both academic and support staff in ucu. I had thought it was academics in ucu and everyone else in unison, unite etc.
posted by biffa at 2:29 PM on February 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

Thanks for the UCU election reminder, actually...I'd completely spaced it. Yeah, UCU membership skews a bit towards academic staff, but there are a ton of professional service types in it too. Reporters and newsreaders don't help matters by calling them "lecturers' strikes" every time, though.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 2:41 PM on February 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

UCU itself isn't always great with representing the interests of increasinglu casualised admin and teaching staff either, though I gather that does vary some by branch.
posted by Dysk at 2:59 PM on February 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's funny/interesting to see it reported outside the UK. This has been strike winter, and my job was so busy on Wednesday that I didn't actually notice this particular strike!

I think the nursing union has the best chance of getting the government to shift a bit, but they've already admitted that they've spent more money opposing the rail workers than it would have cost to give in to the original demands. It is a matter of principle for the Conservatives that if Thatcher did it then so must they. As some articles point out, she was incredibly savvy in her fight with the unions. This feels less so. Still, they're not called the natural party of government because we vote them out office frequently.

Less than two years until there must be an election. Things can only get better, right?
posted by plonkee at 3:23 PM on February 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

Solidarity
posted by onebuttonmonkey at 4:21 PM on February 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

The people of the UK are suffering badly at the hands of Russian agents in the Tory government

Notably, it was entirely possible for Russians to vote for our previous prime minister since anyone can join the Tory party and vote. Sunak didn't have to go to the membership vote.
posted by biffa at 4:23 PM on February 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

Less than two years until there must be an election. Things can only get better, right?

It's kind of sad that milquetoast centre-left style neoliberalism is the UK's only hope once again. Imagine the country under another Clement Attlee.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 4:36 PM on February 2, 2023 [13 favorites]

Are people in this thread really suggesting that the party of Boris Johnson, the world leader who during his time in office was most demonstrably in support of Ukraine of anyone outside the Baltics, is basing its disastrous anti-worker policies on what Russia wants them to do as opposed to literally hundreds of years of Tory history? This is some QAnon level stuff.
posted by derrinyet at 6:31 PM on February 2, 2023 [20 favorites]

derrinyet, haven't you heard, anything bad in the west is because of Russia. No way there could be useless racists in all these first world countries without Russian influence.
posted by Iax at 7:01 PM on February 2, 2023 [5 favorites]

Russian oligarchs donated heavily to the Conservative Party, even going so far as to gain dual citizenship to do so. London's role as a financial center was key to moving massive amounts of wealth out of Russia and where the oligarchs could access them. To pretend that they don't have influence in UK politics is a greater delusion than Santa Claus.

OTOH, the Tories are quite capable of destroying the UK on their own.
posted by gwydapllew at 7:10 PM on February 2, 2023 [18 favorites]

Sure, but the interests of Russian oligarchs in this case have a lot more connection to the interests of oligarchs generally, whatever passports they hold, than to the interests of Russia as a state. And that is the principal sense in which they overlap with Tory policies. There's no Kremlin conspiracy to make the Tories union-busters, they've been doing that for much longer than post-Soviet Russia has existed.
posted by derrinyet at 7:30 PM on February 2, 2023 [12 favorites]

Solidarity!
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 9:08 PM on February 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

Can we drop the Russia derail?
posted by Ickster at 9:29 PM on February 2, 2023 [11 favorites]

Teachers in the middle of the salary scale, for instance, have seen their wages drop by 9 to 10 percent in real terms between 2010 and 2022, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The government says it cannot pay teachers what they are requesting because it would fuel inflation, which is more than 10 percent.

Gotta love the logic. You've lost purchasing power for a decade, but we can't give you more money, because that would erode purchasing power.

Makes you wonder where all that power has been going, doesn't it?
posted by Ickster at 9:35 PM on February 2, 2023 [18 favorites]

Hot take: inflation being high is not really a problem as long as wages keep pace. I don't mind eroding the value of stored wealth. It's not quite redistributive taxation, but it's close enough that I'd take it.
posted by Dysk at 9:45 PM on February 2, 2023 [15 favorites]

✊✊🏻✊🏼✊🏽✊🏾✊🏿
posted by Thella at 10:00 PM on February 2, 2023 [4 favorites]

I’ve had this issue for a bit with news media covering “wage inflation”… if your paper is providing information geared towards the perspective of businesses and not workers, good luck with your circulation numbers.
posted by Selena777 at 10:02 PM on February 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

To pretend that they don't have influence in UK politics is a greater delusion than Santa Claus.

Beyond politics, the disastrous economic state that UK finds itself in — which is why there is a strike — is due partially to global factors, but mostly due to Brexit, which was one direct result of a now several decades-long effort by Russia to destabilize Europe, one country at a time.

It happens to be that a Tory government ridden with Russian agents managed to take power of the country. Other countries like France, Austria, and the Netherlands have their own extremist right-wing parties that are pushing political agendas funded by Kremlin banks (many cites to be found in NYT and other papers of record), but they have been lucky so far that those parties have failed to garner enough power in their respective countries to affect policy change, in the devastating way that Tories have in my home country.

I suspect it won't be clear to outsiders for some years just how bad the situation is — and why. And there will still be deniers, even then.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:36 AM on February 3, 2023 [6 favorites]

I realise that "oh no the russians" is the in explanation for everything in the US at the minute, but that analysis just doesn't hold for the UK. The problems here are homegrown, and while brexit certainly isn't helping anyone, the rest of Europe is also struggling with cost of living rises (and there are strikes elsewhere too!) and the situation here is uniquely bad because of the heavy reliance on natural gas (and not having significant gas storage capability compared to many other European nations) as well as fairly standard right-wing batshit economics. Over a decade of Tories.

I am far from an apologist for brexit, but to argue that it is the main cause of the current economic shitshow is laughable on its face.
posted by Dysk at 1:45 AM on February 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

and the situation here is uniquely bad because of the heavy reliance on natural gas (and not having significant gas storage capability compared to many other European nations) as well as fairly standard right-wing batshit economics.

Unsurprisingly of course, we used to have substantial gas storage, at the Rough facility. British Gas converted an offshore gas field to a storage facility in 1987, capable of holding 100 billion cubic feet - that provided 70% of our storage capacity. It was closed in 2017, because Centrica thought it was too costly to run and the Tories declined to assist with the maintenance costs (as vital national infrastructure) because 'LNG imports were readily available' in the event of shortages. A decision signed off by one Liz Truss, whoever she is... Literally months later, the 'beast from the east' sent gas prices soaring 8 fold and the national grid had to issue a shortage warning.

It was rush recommissioned a couple of months ago at substantial cost, but is operating at minimal levels.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 2:00 AM on February 3, 2023 [9 favorites]

Brexit was a (stupid and failed) attempt at a solution to a problem that goes back at least to 2008, if not the 1970s: catastrophic economic stagnation leading to effectively null wage and productivity growth. It has nothing to do with Russia.
posted by derrinyet at 2:03 AM on February 3, 2023 [6 favorites]

I was out on strike on Wednesday. Decent numbers on our picket, but a lot of people still working unfortunately.

I'm financially doing fine, but pay for my job is down 15-20% in real terms vs 2010. Colleagues at lower grades are really struggling in some cases and there's been a long and gradual erosion of rights and pensions etc that we need to arrest.

My non-striking colleagues tended to take the position that things aren't so bad for us and that we have good working conditions etc, especially compared to nurses or care workers, but that misses the point to me. We can stand in solidarity with them and also take a stand here and now rather than waiting until we're in the same level of precarity.
posted by knapah at 2:16 AM on February 3, 2023 [16 favorites]

It's worth noting how Keir Starmer has approached the strikes; at first, he banned front-bench Labour ministers from supporting the strikes. The industrial action continued despite a very lukewarm response from Labour, and although the strikes are now one of the major political talking points Starmer doesn't seem to be able to use them to his advantage.

It's pretty clear that Starmer would want things to continue more-or-less as they are now, but without making changes to the systemic funk that the UK has got itself into there's not going to be a change in living conditions. Houses will remain expensive, wages low, and the shortfall will have to be covered by working yourself into the ground with multiple jobs, relocating to a poorer area, or by being rich.
posted by The River Ivel at 2:44 AM on February 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

Mick Lynch (general secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers):
"They are responsible for your poverty. ... We refuse to be poor. We are going to win for our people on our terms."
posted by mydonkeybenjamin at 3:03 AM on February 3, 2023 [8 favorites]

I realise that "oh no the russians" is the in explanation for everything in the US at the minute, but that analysis just doesn't hold for the UK. The problems here are homegrown,

This is exactly the same in the U.S. — the domestic right-wing spent decades creating the problems we now see, and to the extent that Russians were involved in anything more than taking advantage of the loopholes & lax enforcement carved out by domestic billionaires, they were largely exploiting those preexisting weaknesses. The reason it’s so popular to blame them is that it offers an excuse for everyone who spent years studiously ignoring the domestic threats and it’s politically much safer than, for example, noting Rupert Murdoch’s greater role in that decline.
posted by adamsc at 6:12 AM on February 3, 2023 [8 favorites]

(Yeah, I should've been clearer that "oh no the Russians" is the explanation provided for everything in the US, I don't actually think it applies there in the suggested way either, but it very much is an in vogue explanation.)
posted by Dysk at 6:54 AM on February 3, 2023

Interestingly enough, the BBC is reporting more about how trans people are evil and gender issues are going to cause the end of sanity in the UK because of the Scottish Government trying to enact civil rights legislation than anything about the strike. I'd read about how the top of the BBC had been replaced with Tory apparatchiks and it's kind of sad to see just how true that is.

As to the Russian thing, the Tories have embraced "the cruelty is the point." They don't need the Russians in order to attempt to harm people. That said, they aren't going to say no to money from Russia, especially if it's coming straight into the party coffers . It's convergent interests. Putin doesn't need to take the lead, he just needs to support the damage.
posted by Hactar at 8:03 AM on February 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

Watch for the pivot on how the pathetic trans women are somehow powerful enough to have cast much of the UK into poverty.
posted by tigrrrlily at 9:51 AM on February 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

"They are responsible for your poverty. ... We refuse to be poor. We are going to win for our people on our terms."

Great speech. I hope the corrupt agents in this government are soon kicked out of their jobs (and hopefully, one day, my country).
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:21 PM on February 3, 2023

As to the Russian thing

A related angle is: conservatives globally spent a lot of the 20th century demonizing The Russians!!1! and using The Dreaded Russians as an excuse to stomp on anyone/anything they liked, so slapping them in the face with their complicity is seen, rightly or wrongly, as a useful bit of rhetoric.
posted by aramaic at 2:46 PM on February 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Britain Is Much Worse Off Than It Understands: things weren’t nearly this bad in the 1970s—but the country’s leaders haven't grasped that yet.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 4:04 AM on February 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

Unpaywalled archive version of the above link.
posted by Dysk at 4:08 AM on February 8, 2023 [3 favorites]