LONDON | The standoff continued in the United Kingdom between railway workers and railway companies after a first day of strong mobilization during the biggest strike movement in thirty years in the sector, the unions demanding better wages and working conditions .
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Tuesday was the biggest day of mobilization, when one out of two lines was closed and four out of five trains canceled in the country, with London Underground employees also called to walk out and many stations closed.
The strike will continue Thursday and Saturday in the railways, at the call of the transport union RMT. The movement divides opinion, supported by 37% of Britons while 45% oppose it according to a poll published Thursday by the YouGov institute.
Negotiations between the union and the railway companies will resume on Wednesday, the RMT announced in a statement late Tuesday afternoon. Network Rail, manager of the railway network, told AFP that the meeting was scheduled for 10 a.m.
RMT however warned that its members would “continue the campaign”, judging that “the participation on the pickets today (Tuesday) had been fantastic” and claiming to “open the way for all the workers of this country who are tired of seeing their wages and their working conditions decrease”.
This strike “is bad and unnecessary” tackled Prime Minister Boris Johnson for his part during a council of ministers calling on the “union barons” to sit at the negotiating table and the sector to agree to modernize for avoid bankruptcies.
Mr. Johnson also recalled that the British government had supported the sector during the pandemic to the tune of 16 billion pounds.
Sparse
On Tuesday morning, the great hall of London’s King’s Cross station only welcomed a sparse public, mostly sympathetic to the railway workers’ strike, instead of the usual rush hour rush.
At St Albans station in north London, the first train did not leave until 8 a.m. And because of reduced services, Scott, a 43-year-old bank employee, has decided to walk 25 minutes when he arrives in the capital.
The RMT union had warned in early June that more than 50,000 railway employees would stop working “during the biggest sectoral conflict since 1989” and the major privatizations of the sector, demanding in particular wage increases in line with galloping inflation. .
In addition to wages, RMT denounces the deterioration of working conditions and “thousands of redundancies” planned, according to him, by the myriad of private companies that make up the rail sector in the United Kingdom.
Open or not?
Since last week, the executive has been repeating that this strike will harm the countless Britons prevented from going to work or to medical appointments and weigh on the accounts of SMEs already battered by Covid-19.
Traders in central London were already seeing the first effects of the strike on Tuesday, with significantly fewer customers than usual.
“It’s hardly worth opening” pubs located near train stations, explains Clive Watson, founder of a chain of establishments, to the PA agency. He estimates that turnover will be “20 to 25% lower” than normal this week.
This walkout also threatens to disrupt major sporting and cultural events, such as the Glastonbury Music Festival (south-west of England), a Rolling Stones concert in London on Saturday and the final exams of some high school students.
The government also maintains that the strike risks encouraging even more telework and therefore a decline in the use of trains.
The executive plans to put in place “protections” for public transport users, including a possible “minimum service” or the replacement of strikers, in particular by temporary workers, if the conflict drags on.
The strike could indeed extend to other transport or other sectors, such as education, health, post. Some lawyers have already voted in favor of a walkout next week, because of a dispute with the government over the amount of legal aid.
