Mass walkouts close schools, halt train services

Up to half-a-million British teachers, public servants and train drivers walked out over pay in the largest co-ordinated strike action for a decade on Wednesday, with unions threatening more disruption as the government digs its heels in on pay demands.

Mass walkouts countrywide shut schools, halted most rail services, and forced the military to be put on standby to help with border checks on a day unions call “Walkout Wednesday”.

According to unions, as many as 300,000 teachers are expected to be on strike, the biggest group involved, as part of wider action by 500,000 people, the highest number since 2011, when public servants walked out en masse.

The PCS Union, representing 100,000 striking public servants from more than 120 government departments, warned Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government that further co-ordinated action was inevitable.

“If the government doesn’t do something about it, I think we will see more days like today with more and more unions joining in,” said PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka. “We need money now,” he said.

INFLATION

With inflation running at more than 10% — the highest level in four decades — Britain has seen a wave of strikes in recent months across the public and private sectors, including health and transport workers, Amazon warehouse employees and Royal Mail postal staff.

Education minister Gillian Keegan said the government would not budge, and that giving in to demands for large wage increases would only fuel inflation. “What we cannot do is give inflation-busting pay rises to one part of the workforce and make inflation worse for everybody. That’s not an economically sensible thing to do,” she told the BBC.

So far the economy has not taken a major hit. The Centre for Economics and Business Research put the cost of strikes in the eight months to January at about £1.7bn or 0.1% of expected GDP. The centre estimated the effect of the teachers’ strikes at about £20m a day.

The strikes may be hitting Sunak’s government. His Conservative party trails the opposition Labour party by 25 percentage points in polls, and surveys indicate the public think the government is handling the strikes badly.

Jonathan Novelle, a medical practitioner, said Britain was in a difficult situation given the limits to its resources. “Its ’ sad, kids want to do their exams and I think there’s a huge amount of pressure on everybody. Depressing, ” he said near London Bridge station.

The strikers are demanding above-inflation pay rises to cover rocketing food and energy bills, which they say have left them struggling to make ends meet.

National Education Union general secretary Mary Bousted said that teachers in her union felt they had no choice but to strike as declining pay meant high numbers were leaving the profession, making it harder for those that remain.

“There has been, over the past 12 years, a really catastrophic long-term decline in their pay,” she said outside a school in south London. “They are saying, very reluctantly, that enough is enough and that things have to change.”

Next week, nurses, ambulance staff, paramedics, emergency call handlers and other health-care workers are set to stage more walkouts, while firefighters this week also backed a nationwide strike.

Outside Bishop Thomas Grant School in Streatham, south London, Natasha De Stefano-Honey, a teacher for 14 years, said it was the worst period for education she could remember.

“Maybe 10 years ago I would really recommend teaching as a career. Now I am one of those teachers that can’t recommend it,” she said.