Now is the Winter of Our Discontent: Who Is Really Responsible for the Nation’s Strikes?

Photo Courtes: Nick Efford

It seems impossible to read the news at the moment without being met with either new strikes in new sectors or rumours thereof. It creates a collective sigh of exhaustion across the country as we prepare for another wave of disruption. But against whom should this sigh be directed? The workers? We’ve all heard the phrase “nobody hates the strikes more than the strikers themselves” yet sometimes it really doesn’t feel that way. Sometimes it’s easier to feel that the strikers are holding the country hostage for their own selfish gains. 

If only it were so simple! However, it never is. These strikes are not merely selfish money-grabs. Many are attempting to address deeper longer-term issues within their sector such as insufficient resources thanks to years of underfunding and government incompetence. The unions are striking for the country’s benefit alongside their own, as the improvement of worker’s conditions improves services for us all.

Consequently, we have predominantly seen strikes in areas that have suffered from poor working conditions, notably in transport, education, and healthcare. Unfortunately, these are sectors that also form the backbone of our nation, sectors that are used daily by everybody in the country, and they have been struggling for years. 

Last December saw over 100,000 nurse and ambulance staff walk out over issues pertaining to low pay, staff cuts and overworking which has severely weakened our treasured healthcare system, making it a husk of its former self. Although these strikes caused delays to patient care, the strikes occurred precisely with patients in mind, patients who are suffering due to 13 years of government neglect. Stories of long ambulance waits and ICU bed shortages are a result of these very issues which striking staff seek to address, not a result of the strikes themselves. These problems do not simply affect nurses and ambulance staff, they affect everyone’s ability to receive care. The backbone of our country has been breaking for years and it is just about ready to snap; these strikes are a last resort to hold it up lest it disintegrate altogether.

Concerns about underfunding, overworking and low pay are also completely valid justifications in themselves for other striking sectors like the transport sector where railway staff, in particular, have been suffering with pay far below what is needed to live decently and threats of redundancy. Closer to home for us students are the strikes within the education sector, with staff at almost every British university struggling over issues like the use of zero hours contracts. Although the strikes have caused and continue to cause major disruption for the public, their concerns are with sector-wide failures, failures which when ignored affect the service we receive far more than strikes do. 

But what has the government done to resolve the strikes? Not enough. The government has gladly taken money away from necessary sectors whilst giving themselves and their friends tax breaks. It seems a perfectly reasonable suggestion that this money should go to remunerating deserving workers and their sectors, not to lining the pockets of the incredibly wealthy. Alas, the government, it seems, disagrees with this common-sense contention. There has been little attempt to resolve these strikes with unions claiming that negotiations were inadequate, even downright insulting. Workers are eager for fruitful negotiations to occur yet it seems the government would rather hinder the democratic right to strike than address their urgent root cause, the government’s own failures. 

These recent months have been disruptive, that much is clear, yet these disruptions have not been out of spite or for selfish individual gain. These strikes are for basic rights: an adequate wage, an end to unjustified redundancies, badly needed increases in funding. These are issues which go far beyond simple pay disagreements. Unions are attempting to salvage not only their jobs but the whole public sector on which we are all reliant and which for years has faced the harsh hand of a government whose incompetence has been baffling. It is the government who has taken the country hostage, and it is the government who demands we suffer for it.