By Mohammad El Sahily | Staff Writer
On Wednesday, February 1, the United Kingdom experienced one of the largest student strikes in its history. In a coordinated effort, tens of thousands of students, faculty, and staff marched in the streets of London to demand better pay and working conditions, in the midst of an intensifying economic crisis that was exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, the post-COVID period, and the financial policies of the Conservative government under Rishi Sunak. The strikes are scheduled to continue over a period of eighteen days, under the same slogans and demands espoused by the University College Union (UCU), the main organizer.
The strike campaign has been in the works for months. As the Conservative government adopted a financial policy to facilitate economic recovery, it cut back on funding for public universities while at the same time increasing the pay of vice-chancellors. Last November, UCU members held a historic vote which called for action under demands of equal pay. When faced with a lack of response from university administrations, UCU decided to strike for several days in November. In addition, it initiated a campaign to call for a historic 18-day strike over the months of February and March of this year.
Up to half a million British teachers, civil servants, train drivers, and university lecturers have walked off their jobs to demand better pay and working conditions in the largest coordinated strike action in a generation as wages fail to keep pace with soaring inflation. About 300,000 people on strike on Wednesday are teachers, according to the Trades Union Congress.
Teachers at schools across England and Wales formed picket lines as they called for higher salaries in demonstrations that have divided public opinion. The National Education Union said 23,000 schools will be affected on Wednesday with many fully or partially closed.
Other workers also on strike range from museum employees and London bus drivers to coastguards and border officials manning passport control booths at airports. More action, including by nurses and ambulance workers, is planned for the coming days and weeks. Union bosses say that despite some pay rises – such as a 5 percent offer the government proposed to teachers – wages in the public sector have failed to keep up with skyrocketing prices. The ineffectual “reforms” have apparently failed to resolve the problem and threaten the livelihoods of academic employees and researchers.
On Monday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told public health workers he met on a visit: “I would love, nothing more would give me more pleasure, than to wave a magic wand and have all of you paid lots more.”
“An important part of us getting a grip on inflation and halving it is making sure the government’s responsible with its borrowing because, if that gets out of control, that makes it worse, and it’s about making pay settlements reasonable and fair.”
In most recent events, on Wednesday the minister of Education Gillian Keegan announced that higher wage increases would fuel inflation further and the government’s response was unchanged.