LONDON, Since the beginning of this year, Britain has been embroiled in a fresh juncture of its economic crisis, triggered off by mounting labor strikes involving various vital sectors.
National strikes are expected to increase in the weeks and months to come, with many state sectors joining the ongoing wave of strikes amid outstanding global economic challenges.
Staff across 150 UK universities intend to gon on strike on 1 February, with strikes by teachers in England and Wales being scheduled for 1 February, 15 and 16 March, saying that a pay offer worth four-five-percent made during recent talks was insufficient.
Train drivers are expected to strike on 1 and 3 February after trade union leaders turned down a pay offer from rail companies.
They had been offered a four percent pay rise for two years in a bid to put an end to a long-running dispute over pay and conditions.
The renewed walkouts by drivers come after a series of large-scale rail strikes involving rail workers and guards in recent months.
Train drivers’ strikes alone triggered off estimated direct financial losses in the vicinity of 100 million pounds (USD 122 million) in June 2022, which signals that there would be more serious losses with other sectors joining the current wave of national strikes.
The Royal College of Nurses (RCN) has announced further strikes on 18 and 19 January in England, with the union calling for a 19 percent pay rise. Ambulance staff in England and Wales are planning for a strike on 23 January.
Royal Mail, Border Force, highway workers and bus drivers, along with employees at 124 government bodies and ministries are expected to join national strikes.
Many experts and economists predict that all these strikes would certainly affect all vital sectors in Britain, causing further losses and possibly economic recession following successive negative growths over recent months.
Strikes have already disrupted everything from train services to postal deliveries and hospital care, mainly demanding pay increases in order to keep up with rising prices.
All these moves come as the UK economy has already suffered due to the negative impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, sending economic and banking indicators into record levels that had forced the government to take unprecedented measures costing roughly 50 billion pounds (USD 61 billion).
The long-running Russia-Ukraine war even came to add fuel to the UK economic crisis, causing a slew of negative impacts and reflections amid astronomically surging fuel, gas and foodstuff prices.
Source: Kuwait News Agency