How does UK’s ‘Christmas of discontent’ compare with the rest of Europe?

The UK and Europe are being gripped by a wave of industrial action as spiralling inflation and sky-high energy prices hit worker’s pockets.

In the UK, staff at Border Force have become the latest workers to announce walk-outs in December. They have joined a growing list of staff preparing to take strike action in some of the country’s most vital sectors, including NHS staff, teachers, postal and rail workers.

There will be “at least one walkout a day” in the run-up to Christmas as multiple sectors push for higher wages, said Sky News. The Financial Times calculated that more than 1 million working days were set to be lost to strike action in December, “the worst disruption” in any month since July 1989.

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Meanwhile in Europe, “a season of strike action is already in full swing” as workers push for higher pay having suffered “the biggest decline in real income in years”, said Bloomberg.

What did the papers say?

Inflation in the eurozone “hit a record 10.7%” in October, said the Financial Times, leading to fears among European Central Bank (ECB) officials that a “1970s-style ‘wage-price spiral’” could develop if European workers “come to expect double digit inflation”.

According to the ECB, average wage growth in the eurozone in 2022 stood at 4% – “more modest” than in the UK and US – although it is expected to rise to 4.8% in 2022. Nevertheless, “unions are seeking to narrow the gap”, said Bloomberg, “with shortages of skilled labour giving them leverage”.

A wave of strikes has already taken place across Europe, and looks set to continue into the winter. In November, workers in Greece participated in a 24-hour general strike that saw “thousands of protesters march through Athens and the northern city of Thessaloniki”, said Fox News. Workers in Belgium also held a general strike last month, bringing the country to a “virtual standstill” as union leaders demanded pay increases to offset the effects of soaring inflation, according to Le Monde.

In France, where inflation has hit 6.2%, the lowest of any eurozone nation, rail workers will be striking over pay and conditions in action that will last through much of the Christmas season and into January. Spain, too, has seen workers demanding higher wages in order to keep up with inflation, with thousands packing themselves into Madrid’s Plaza Mayor “in the country’s first mass protest since the start of the cost of living crisis”, said Reuters.

What next?

In general, strikes are more common in Europe than in the UK. Data from the European Trade Union Institute found that the average number of strike days per thousand workers per year was 22.3 in Europe in 2019, compared to just 4.9 in the UK.

Nevertheless, strike action in Britain is reaching close to unprecedented levels. The Daily Mail has called the wave of strikes taking place this winter as a “general strike in all but name” as the paper calls for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to “rein in militant unions”.

But a general strike of the kind last seen in Britain in 1926 – the UK’s first and only mass withholding of labour – is now all but impossible. “Trade union laws introduced after the General Strike and tightened in the 1980s restrict disputes to successful ballots at individual workplaces,” said The Guardian. “Nonetheless, some union leaders say they are coordinating action for maximum impact,” said the paper, and some “1.5 million workers could again be on picket lines by Christmas”.

Indeed, the government’s view is “no longer a case of whether industrial action will take place but rather a case of when and on what scale”, said Steven Swinford in The Times. He fears that strikes “are likely to become a routine fact of life in the run up to the next election”.

Against that backdrop, Sunak has said he is working on “new tough laws” to curb strike action. This may include plans to “outlaw strikes by ambulance workers and firefighters early next year”, ensure “minimum service levels across the public sector on strike days” and “raising the threshold in strike ballots and doubling the minimum notice period”, said Politico’s London Playbook.

But Sunak’s government “doesn’t have a mandate to ban all emergency workers from striking” and anti-strike legislation could well “be held up in the Lords”, continued Playbook. “Whatever happens measures are likely to take time to implement” – with changes unlikely to be in place before the next election.