There are all kinds of calendars. That of soccer fans with their team's matches, that of soldiers pointing out what is left to finish their shift in a country at war, the traditional Germans that count the days between Advent and Christmas with little windows that enclose poems, Santa Claus figures or chocolates... And then there is the UK fashion calendar, which indicates which services are on strike on each given date.
In fact, the question in Britain today is not so much who is on strike as who is not. Because the impression is that the country, between the labor protests, the snow and the bad weather, is almost completely paralyzed and in a situation of chaos that closely mimics the "winters of discontent" of the late seventies. that propelled Margaret Thatcher to Downing Street.
Travel by rail? Only twenty percent of the trains work because of the strike. By plane? Hundreds of flights have been canceled since yesterday due to adverse weather conditions. By car? Better not, because the roads are icy, and the Royal Automobile Club has recommended that it only be used in emergencies. Suffer a fall or a heart attack? Be careful, because instead of an ambulance they will send you an Uber or an army truck. To have a baby? You have to calculate the date of delivery well, because there are days that the midwives will not work. Get into the hospital? It does not seem like a good idea considering that one can spend twelve hours in the emergency room, and more than seven million Britons are on the waiting list for operations. Send a Christmas greeting? Better a whatsapp, because it won't arrive until February. Going on vacation? On the way back there will be no one to stamp the passports and put the suitcases on the airport carousels.
Even the meteorologists and scientists tasked with ensuring the security of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons facilities have announced that they are going on strike! It is what has an inflation of eleven percent that dramatically affects the purchasing power of citizens. But while workers in the private sector negotiate salary increases with their companies (the average is 6%), those in the public sector are constrained by government guidelines to curb inflation and not further burden the state debt, which suggest increases not much higher than 2%, depending on the sector.
The consequence is a wave of strikes the likes of which has not been recorded in more than forty years, at the dawn of Thatcherism, which clashed with the miners and those who ran the newspaper presses, and clipped the wings of the unions. Today only one in four workers is unionized, while in the 1970s one in two was. But the majority are civil servants, and their capacity to wreak havoc in the daily life of the country is enormous, even if their power is not what it used to be. The damages are especially onerous for pubs, hotels, restaurants and theaters, since the difficulties in travel have led to the cancellation of numerous business dinners, functions and family and friends gatherings, a very important source of income for the hospitality sector. facing the January slope, and even more so in the current economic climate. In the month of October, 400,000 work days were lost, and it is estimated that in December there will be more than a million, another severe blow to the country's meager productivity.
The government's position is to “not interfere” (in other words, mediate) in the negotiations between the different groups and the corresponding ministries or companies in the sector. In the case of the semi-nationalized railways, the offer of a 4% wage increase this year and 5% next year has been rejected as insufficient (it is less than half inflation), and employees are also resisting the attempt to close station ticket offices on weekends and cut nearly two thousand jobs due to technological advances. They went on strike yesterday, have gone today and will return Friday and Saturday, making Christmas travel difficult.
Government and unions are locked in a media war for people to blame the other party. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak insisted yesterday that the labor demands "are unreasonable" in the current inflationary climate, but workers' representatives argue that the problem is not just now, but has its origin in the austerity imposed by the conservatives since the financial crisis of 2008, which means that in real terms salaries are now lower than then. The Labor opposition, meanwhile, tries to wash its hands of it and stay equidistant. On the one hand he accepts that salary increases must be "moderate", on the other he affirms that the chaotic state of finances is the consequence of twelve years of Tory rule.
Union leaders have learned from the battles of half a century ago, they take more care of public relations and do not arouse antipathy than in Thatcher's time. But although the voters are for now on the side of the workers (they too suffer from inflation), it remains to be seen what they will say when they get tired of not being able to catch the train or go to the hospital. There are two years left until the elections and, of all the calendars, that is the only one that matters to politicians.
