Timeline of UK Strikes From Lawyers to Dockers and Rail Workers
Striking Unite union members and dockworkers wave placards at a passing truck driver leaving the Port of Felixstowe in Felixstowe, UK, on Aug. 24.
Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/BloombergThe UK’s snowballing cost-of-living crisis has triggered industrial action across professions from railway workers and dockers to barristers and postal staff, as struggling Britons put pressure on their employers to raise wages amid rocketing inflation.
With the British media dubbing the wave of strikes a “summer of discontent” -- summoning memories of the 1978-1979 “winter of discontent” that led to the downfall of the then Labour government -- the danger for the UK’s next prime minister is that action by workers stretches into the fall and then the winter, with some union leaders calling for a general strike.