British Railway Workers Launch New 48-Hour Strike

On Friday, railway workers began a new 48-hour strike to demand wage increases to make up for the loss in purchasing power caused by inflation in the UK.

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Workers also staged a two-day strike on Tuesday and Wednesday after negotiations between the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT) and Network Rail failed.

Previously, Network Rail offered workers a 5 percent pay increase. This did not satisfy the workers who had started negotiations requesting a 7 percent increase. Meanwhile, however, the inflation rate in the UK has already exceeded 10 percent.

The intransigence of the British government and companies is accelerating the path to recession as demand declines. Over the last year, strikes have been led by ambulance drivers, postmen, border agents, luggage carriers, security agents, nurses, and other workers.

According to the latest official statistics available, 417,000 working days were lost because of labor disputes in the United Kingdom in October, the highest number since November 2011. This winter's widespread strikes are expected to increase this figure further.

The largest wave of labor shares in a decade came off the back of persistently low real wage growth for public sector workers coupled with high inflation, Nye Cominetti, senior economist at the think tank Resolution Foundation, said.

Average regular pay growth was 6.9 percent for the private sector and 2.7 percent for the public sector between August and October, which "is among the largest differences between the private sector and public sector growth rates we have seen," the Office for National Statistics (ONS) acknowledged.