As strikes for wages have multiplied for months in the country in the face of record inflation, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, announced on Friday September 23 that the government would limit the right to strike in cases where negotiations between trade unions and employers have “truly failed”.
“We will legislate to force unions to submit wage offers [faites par les employeurs] to a vote of their members. before they can go on strike, explained Mr Kwarteng during a budget presentation to the British Parliament. It is “guarantee that strikes can only be called once negotiations have genuinely failed”he said to the British MPs.
The finance minister also announced the government’s intention to set up a minimum service for “prevent the unions from paralyzing the transport network”as they already do “other European countries”he justified.
Multiplication of strike movements
The previous Conservative government had already introduced a law authorizing the use of temporary workers to replace striking employees. It aroused the ire of many trade unions, which announced earlier this week legal action against the measure.
Railway workers, but also postal workers, dockers, criminal lawyers or garbage collectors have multiplied strike movements since June, but several unions had decreed a pause in their movements during the period of national mourning following the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Movements are picking up again in the face of inflation at the highest in forty years across the Channel, at 9.9% over one year in August, the highest in the G7.
A strike by train drivers will resume in early October, while dockworkers at the English port of Felixstowe are planning a new week-long walkout between the end of September and the beginning of October due to failure to win their case. in a similar move in August.
