Overview of how the strike is affecting different sectors across the UK

Some planned strikes have been called off so union members can vote on new wage offers, while teachers have rejected an agreement.

Here’s a sector-by-sector rundown of some of the strikes that are happening, scheduled or averted.

INDUSTRY Strikes
(PA charts)

– Education

England’s schools face more strikes this spring after members of the UK’s biggest education union rejected a government wage offer.

Some 98% of teacher members of the National Education Union (NEU) in England, who responded in an advisory vote, voted to reject the deal.

The NEU had urged its members to reject the offer and now plans to hold two more days of teachers’ strikes on April 27 and May 2.

The government had offered teachers a one-time payment of £1,000 for the current school year (2022/23) and an average 4.5% pay increase for staff next year (2023/24), and Education Secretary Gillian Keegan suggested they could miss out on a pay raise deal this year if they turned down the deal.

Members of the NASUWT teachers’ union, the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) and the National Association of Headmasters (NAHT) are also asked for their comments on the government’s offer.

It comes after many schools in England were forced to partially or fully close during NEU-organized strikes in February and March as a result of a pay dispute.

– Health

Young doctors in England will stage a new round of strikes after talks with the government failed to resolve a bitter dispute over pay.

The British Medical Association (BMA) said a 96-hour strike will take place for shifts starting between 6:59am Tuesday April 11 and 6:59am Saturday April 15. April.

Young doctors from the Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association (HCSA) will go on strike on the same days.

A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care said the BMA had placed an “unreasonable” precondition on talks of a 35% pay increase, but the union denied that was the case.

BMA members who are junior doctors in Scotland will receive a ballot on Wednesday asking them if they support strikes as part of their campaign for a pay increase.

Voting will close on May 5, and if the strikes are supported, the doctors will begin their action with a full 72-hour weekday strike.

It comes as up to 280,000 members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) in England will vote on whether to accept the government’s NHS pay offer.

Members will have until 9:00 a.m. on April 14 to cast their vote on the offer that the RCN Board has recommended be accepted.

The proposed settlement, which involves two one-time payments for the current fiscal year, affects each worker differently, depending on their pay band and pay point.

The combined payments are worth between £1,655 and £3,789, depending on salary band, and are in addition to increases already made this fiscal year.

These are called unvested amounts, as they do not count toward members’ pensions and are not added to your future pay package.

There will be a permanent 5% salary increase at all pay points for 2023-24.

The RCN vote comes after six days of strikes since December in the long-running dispute over wages.

– Civil Service

industrial strike
PCS union members on the picket outside the Passport Office in Glasgow (Jane Barlow/PA)

On Monday, April 3, workers at the Passport Office began a five-week strike as part of a Civil Service dispute over jobs, wages, pensions and conditions.

More than 1,000 members of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union at eight sites were marching, picketing offices in Glasgow, Durham, Liverpool, Southport, Peterborough, London, Belfast and Newport in Wales. .

The union is intensifying the strikes, with a nationwide strike of more than 130,000 officials scheduled for April 28.

– Airport security

Heathrow security guards are currently on a 10-day strike over pay that may cause disruption to flights over the Easter weekend.

Some 1,400 Unite members began their action on Friday March 31 after talks broke down the night before.

Members have set up pickets outside the airport.

Airport chief executive John Holland-Kaye said last week: “Heathrow is operating as normal. If you travel during Holy Week, don’t worry, you will have a good trip”.

Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham said: “Heathrow can afford to pay its workers a decent wage increase.

“Heathrow executives seem to think it is acceptable to offer what amounts to a pay cut in real terms to their security guards and ground staff who are already on poverty wages.”

The strike ends at 11:59 p.m. on Easter Sunday, April 10.

– Transport

The Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union called off strikes that were scheduled to take place on March 30 and April 1 to hold new talks with the Rail Delivery Group.

The move follows further discussions between the union and the organization in the longstanding dispute over wages, jobs and conditions.

The union has already settled its dispute with Network Rail in a similar dispute.

On March 20, RMT announced that its members at Network Rail had voted to accept an offer to end the dispute over wages, jobs and conditions.

With a turnout of nearly 90%, members voted in favor 76% to 24%, marking the end of the dispute that has led to a series of strikes in recent months.

The union said the agreement includes a wage increase of between 14.4% for the lowest-paid grades and 9.2% for the highest-paid, a retroactive wage increase, a mandatory no-layoff agreement until January 2025 and rail travel benefits.

– Amazon

The GMB union has said more than 500 of its members at an Amazon warehouse in Coventry will strike for three days from April 16 and again from April 21-23 in an escalation of a dispute over wages.

The six days of action follow a series of walkouts earlier this year.

The GMB has also said it will vote its members at five more Amazon sites in the Midlands to strike “over a 50p pay increase imposed by Amazon management.”

The online giant has said that the minimum starting wage for its employees will increase by £11 to £12 an hour, depending on location.

–BBC

BBC journalists in England will go on a 24-hour strike from midnight on May 5 to coincide with the presentation of local election results, in a dispute over local radio outages.

It will be the second strike by members of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) after a strike on Budget Day.

The union says BBC management wants local radio stations to share programs over the network from 2pm Monday to Friday and at weekends, moving from more than 100 hours of local programming on each station to radio every week to 40.

A BBC spokesperson said: “We have a plan to modernize local services across England, including more news journalists and a stronger local online service, which will not see an overall reduction in staffing levels or local funding.”

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