It is one of the biggest strikes for thirty years in the British railway which begins, for three days. This Tuesday will be the biggest day of mobilization with one out of two lines closed and four out of five trains removed. London Underground employees are also called to strike.
The RMT union, at the origin of the “biggest sectoral conflict since 1989” with nearly 50,000 railway employees who should stop working, is calling in particular for wage increases in line with galloping inflation in the country. In addition to wages, RMT denounces the deterioration of working conditions and “thousands of layoffs” planned in the private railway companies that make up the sector in the United Kingdom.
This paralysis of the railways will come to be added to the chaos in the airports. In recent weeks, airports have been marked by long queues and hundreds of flight cancellations. The air industry is currently suffering from a shortage of employees, especially as the sector is struggling to recruit in the face of the recovery in demand after the lifting of health restrictions.
As the strike approached, the executive continued to call on unions and companies to continue negotiations. But these failed Monday at the end of the day, RMT deeming “unacceptable” the proposals made by the employers.
“Suffering and Chaos”
A new meeting is scheduled with the government on Tuesday. Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, said that “Unions are hurting those they claim to help” and called for a “reasonable compromise for the good of the British people and rail workers” to be found. The government says unions are shooting themselves in the foot as the rail sector, which has benefited from £16billion in grants to help it deal with plummeting revenues during the pandemic, risks seeing passenger numbers take a long-term step back in the face of the development of telework.
This strike movement “will bring suffering and chaos to millions of users”, lamented the Minister for Transport, Grant Shapps, before Parliament, criticized by both the unions and the Labor opposition for not not be sitting at the negotiating table himself. “The government is not the employer”, retorted Grant Shapps
In the meantime, this walkout threatens to disrupt major sporting and cultural events, such as the Glastonbury music festival (south-west of England), a Rolling Stones concert in London on Saturday and the final exams of some high school students.