Downward Pressure on Pay Fuels UK Industrial Strife, Expert

The winter of strike-induced chaos faced by the United Kingdom is the result of both immediate pressures from high inflation and longer-term downward ones on pay and working conditions, an expert has said.

"There have always been strikes and there always will be strikes," Deborah Dean, co-director of the Industrial Relations Research Unit at the Warwick Business School, told Xinhua in a recent interview.

RELATED:
 Massive Strikes To Hit Britain During Christmas Season

"But the very large number of strikes, very much concentrated in the public sector or previously public sector occupations, is really the result of an unprecedentedly long period of downward pressure on pay," Dean said.

The wave of strikes in the UK continued unabated in December, with rail workers and nurses, among others, walking out for better pay and working conditions. The current month is expected to see over a million days lost to strike action for the first time since 1989.

Part of the problem is the persistently high inflation. The annual inflation rate reached 10.7 percent in November while wage growth was falling. Adjusted for inflation over the year, total and regular pay among UK employees both fell by 2.7 percent in August to October, the largest drop in growth since comparable records began in 2001.

"Real pay has been in decline, and public sector pay, in particular, is in decline in comparison to the private sector at the moment," as the austerity policies introduced after 2010 have had a disproportionately severe effect on the public sector, she said.

An analysis published by the London Economics consultancy in October and cited by the Royal College of Nursing found that the salaries of experienced nurses have declined by 20 percent in real terms over the last 10 years in most of the UK. The union is campaigning for a pay rise.

A new YouGov poll showed in December that the historic strike of UK nurses was backed by two-thirds of the British public, with 45 percent "strongly" supporting it.

However, Dean said it was difficult to say how long public support will last for any group of striking workers.

The UK government continues to lock horns with the unions. It said that the pay rises are unaffordable and higher pay will not help fight inflation. Health and railway workers have announced new strikes in January.

A large proportion of British workers in the late 1970s used to have their pay either decided directly by collective bargaining or affected by the agreements of collective bargaining, and the trade unions played a key role, the expert said.

That, however, changed completely from the 1980s onwards, and now "there's been a move towards individualization of employment and negotiating around pay and your own conditions."