UK Faces ‘Challenging Period’ With Fresh Wave of Strikes Causing Disruptions: Sunak

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak during his visit to RAF Coningsby in Linconshire, England, on Dec. 9, 2022. Joe Giddens/PA Media

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has warned that the country is facing a “challenging period” with a wave of industrial action over the coming weeks.

Sunak made the comments during a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, as train services across the UK were severely disrupted by the first of a wave of 48-hour strikes in the run-up to Christmas.

The prime minister’s official spokesman said: “The prime minister opened Cabinet by saying the country is facing significant industrial action across a range of sectors this winter and that this will be a challenging period to get through.

“He added that the government had been fair and reasonable in its approach to agreeing the independent pay review bodies’ recommendations for public sector pay rises and in facilitating further discussion with unions and employers.”

But while the government will do “all we can to minimise disruption,” he said, the only way to stop it was “by the unions going back round the table and calling off these strikes.”

RMT general secretary, Mick Lynch, speaks at a rally outside Kings Cross station, London, on June 25, 2022. Dominic Lipinski/PA Media

In addition to the rail strikes, nurses in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland are set to walk out on Thursday after talks with the government broke down on Monday night.

Physiotherapists in England and Wales have voted to strike in their first-ever ballot on pay, and industrial action is expected to take place early in the new year.

Midwives and maternity support workers in Wales who are members of the Royal College of Midwives have also voted to go on strike over pay.

According to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), 417,000 working days were lost to labour disputes in October, which is the highest since November 2011.

Union Not ‘Spoiling’ Christmas

Members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union at Network Rail and 14 train companies are striking in a bitter row over jobs, pay, and conditions.

Around half of Britain’s rail lines will be closed all day on Tuesday, with trains in other areas only running between 7:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. The same disruption is expected on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday.

Many services were cancelled due to the rail strike at Central Station, Glasgow, Scotland, on June 21, 2022. Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Network Rail had offered a 5 percent pay rise for this year—backdated to January—with another 4 percent at the start of 2023 and a guarantee of no compulsory job losses until January 2025. But the RMT said 64 percent of its members who voted rejected the proposal.

RMT general secretary Mick Lynch insisted his members still have the support of the public and denied that the union intends to “spoil” Christmas.

He told Good Morning Britain: “I have no intention of spoiling people’s Christmas. The government is contributing to that spoiling of the people’s Christmas because they’ve brought these strikes on by stopping the companies from making suitable proposals.”

Lynch rejected a suggestion that RMT members are opposed to reform.

He told BBC Breakfast: “We’re not opposed to change. We deal with it all of the time.” But he added that workers can only accept “negotiated change, not imposition.”

Lynch insisted the union is “ready to make compromises,” but accused the government of “deliberately obstructing” negotiations.

‘Tide Is Turning’

Asked if the public can expect more strikes in 2023, the union leader told the PA news agency: “Well, we hope not. We want to get a deal but at the moment, there is no deal in sight.”

Talking to the BBC, Network Rail chief executive Andrew Haines also said that it is “hard to see” hope in the negotiations on rail strikes.

But Downing Street said there had been a “notable” decline in support for strike action within the rail unions.

The prime minister’s spokesman said that some 36.4 percent of RMT members at Network Rail who voted did not follow the union leadership’s advice to reject the pay deal.

Transport Secretary Mark Harper also claimed the “tide is turning” within unions about strike action, as a “fair and reasonable offer” had been made to rail workers.

He told GB News that the Unite union has accepted the offer, and the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association (TSSA) has also recommended that their members accept it.

“But the RMT have refused to do so and I would call on them to look again at this offer and accept it,” he said.

Asked if he had insisted on a condition requiring driver-only trains as part of an improved pay deal—something which the RMT union is vehemently opposed to—Harper told Sky News: “Reform of the rail industry has been on the table from the very beginning.”

He added: “Driver-only trains are not a new thing. They have been running since the 1980s.”

PA Media contributed to this report.