Walkout Wednesday hits Britain

The single biggest day of industrial action in over a decade took place in Britain on Wednesday as up to half a million workers joined picket lines to demand better working conditions and inflation-busting pay rises.

Teachers, university staff, bus and train drivers and civil servants, including border force staff, all participated in “Walkout Wednesday”. 

It was the first day of strike action this year for civil servants. An estimated 100,000 of them across 124 government departments took part, bolstered by a PCS union survey which found that one in 12 civil servants use food banks and one in 10 signed up to Universal Credit in 2022. Data released by the Cabinet Office last year found that civil servants are quitting the profession at the highest rate in a decade. 

Today is also the first of seven days of industrial action by members of the National Education Union – and adding teachers into the strike mix is extremely politically damaging for the government. 

Up to 150,000 teachers joined the picket line, causing an estimated 85% of schools to either fully or partially close. This comes as data from the IFS reveals that senior teachers experienced a 13% real-terms drop in salaries between 2010 and 2022, equivalent to a £6,600 pay cut.

The impact of strikes on pupils’ education is a major concern given the huge disruption school children have already faced during the pandemic years. 

Yet many teachers insist they’re striking for students too. Some say this is also a protest about the lack of resources for the education sector which hinders their ability to teach. One teacher on the picket line this morning told the BBC that she has been forced to rely on just one glue stick for 30 children for two weeks. 

Mounting frustration within the profession is causing retention and recruitment issues, with schools increasingly reliant on supply teachers who lack specialist subjects. 

Education Secretary, Gillian Keegan, says she is continuing to meet with union leaders but warned again today that inflation-busting pay rises won’t help anyone in the long-term since a wage-price spiral would set in. “We have to look after everybody in the economy,” she reasoned. 

It’s been suggested that a way round this would be to offer teachers one-off payments to get through the year, which wouldn’t fuel inflation so much. 

In an interesting omission, Keir Starmer did not even mention the massive day of strike action during PMQs today – perhaps because he lacks a much clearer plan of action (Labour has also voiced concern that inflation busting-pay rises across the public sector could prove “unaffordable”).

Yet the government cannot afford to ignore the strikes. Ongoing industrial action is damaging the economy too. The Centre for Economics and Business Research puts the lower estimate of the total direct and indirect cost of strikes to UK GDP over the eight months to January this year at £1.7bn.