Why are so many workers on strike?

Analysis

BBC

Government, Politics, News

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 10 July 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Will 2023 be known as the summer of discontent? This year, nearly every corner of the country has been affected by some kind of industrial action, and more is coming. Teachers, doctors, nurses, railway workers, airport security, civil servants are among the many professions which have called strikes to protest against, amongst other things, future pay packets during a cost of living crisis. But do labour union tactics really deliver for their members, or does the strong bargaining position of the government come out on top in the end?

In this edition of Analysis, Faisal Islam hears from three top union leaders, along with industrial relations experts, about the challenges of calling and maintaining strike actions and the tolls it can take on members and the public. Where lies the balance of power between a workforce banding together to demand a better deal and the public which has to work around disappearing services?

You can learn more about this topic by watching the BBC 2 documentary Strike: Inside the Unions available on BBC iPlayer.

Contributors: Sharon Graham - General Secretary: Unite Union Mick Lynch - General Secretary: Rail, Maritime and Transport Union Pat Cullen - General Secretary: Royal College of Nursing Jerry Cope - Former Pay Review Body Chair Mark Stuart - Montague Burton Professor of Employment Relations, University of Leeds Lord Richard Balfe - Member, House of Lords

Presenter: Faisal Islam Producer: Sandra Kanthal Editor: Clare Fordham Programme Coordinator: Maria Ogundele

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.6	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
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0:29.7	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.
0:37.0	Thank you for downloading this edition of Analysis, the program which looks at the ideas and events shaping public policy in Britain and beyond.
0:46.0	This week BBC economics editor Faisal Islam looks at why strikes are being called in so many
0:51.7	workplaces across the UK and what this means for
0:55.2	resurgent labour unions. Every time unions assert themselves these new waves of industrial action are inevitably
1:10.9	compared to the cold dark days of the 1970s dubbed the winter of
1:16.4	discontent when the country seized up as workers down tools. With strikes taking place across the health service, railways, post offices,
1:30.9	civil service and really what feels like every sector of public life at the moment,
1:35.8	it's tempting to draw on those past decades for comparisons.
1:41.8	But with a cost of living crisis, labour shortages and the perception of a shift in public opinion,
1:48.0	the times and the seasons are different.
1:51.0	That was a long time ago, 43 years ago.
1:54.0	Many workers who are on strike currently weren't even born then.
1:58.1	Things are very different now.
2:00.0	Union membership was much higher then.
2:02.1	Union strength was much higher then, and there was
	...

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