The strike wave in the U.K. is spreading. Dockworkers at the Port of Felixstowe, the country’s largest container port, voted to strike yesterday. From Reuters:
The dockworkers join a growing wave of employees, in a range of sectors from rail to telecoms, resorting to industrial action as pay rises fail to keep pace with inflation which is expected to hit double digits in Britain by the end of the year.
“Strike action would bring Felixstowe to a standstill and would cause major logistical problems for maritime and road haulage transport entering the port,” Unite said in a statement.
Unite’s regional officer Miles Hubbard said the industrial action would “inevitably create huge disruption across the UK’s supply chain”.
Unite said workers at Felixstowe Docks, which is operated by Hutchison Ports, had been offered a pay increase of 5%.
It’s the same story as elsewhere: Raises that were sufficient in the past are no longer acceptable to workers dealing with high inflation. Consumer-price inflation in the U.K. is at 9.4 percent right now, so a 5 percent raise amounts to a 4.4 percent cut in real terms.
This comes on top of the threatened strike action at the port in Liverpool, whose dockworkers are organized by the same union. The union is fully aware of the economic consequences and doesn’t appear hesitant about striking.
British labor leaders see the strike action as part of a broader economy-wide trend. From the Guardian:
The vote for action came as a senior union official predicted rolling strikes across the economy for the rest of the year beginning with a “summer of solidarity”, as workers become emboldened to protest in the face of rising living costs.
Simon Weller, the assistant general secretary of the train drivers union Aslef and a national council member of the Trades Union Congress, said strike ballots planned by civil servants and teachers alongside more strikes already planned by college staff and across the rail network – starting with train drivers walking out at seven operators on Saturday – would increase “organic momentum”.
Felixstowe is located on the eastern coast of England, near Ipswich, on the North Sea. It is connected by rail to London, which is just under 100 miles away. It handles 48 percent of British container trade. The strike action is planned for August.