Britain: Teachers, universities and post offices strike

Post office workers, teachers and university staff across the country are on strike today to demand better wages. Britain threatening further mobilization and widespread unrest in the run-up to Christmas.

More than 70,000 staff at British universities, teachers across Scotland and postal workers walked off the job today amid growing row as workers and businesses grapple with the cost of living crisis.

University and College Union (UCU) general secretary Jo Grady said the planned three-day strike was the “biggest industrial action in the history of higher education” over the dispute over pensions, working conditions and pay.

Teachers across Scotland began the first day of strike action following the collapse of talks over a pay deal with the Scottish Government and the Assembly of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA). The Scottish Institute of Education trade union has called on its members “across all schools in Scotland” to strike. A COSLA spokesman said the union needed to “recognise that these are extremely difficult economic times”.

Royal Mail postal workers two days of protests are starting today across Britain, coinciding with Black Friday sales. The long-running dispute between the company and the CWU union is one of several raging across the country, including a pay standoff with rail workers who have announced planned strikes in the two months before and after the Christmas holidays.

Rail union chiefs will meet the transport minister later today. Michael Gove, a senior member of the government, said there needed to be effective negotiations between workers and unions.

“My first thought is for those affected by it strike, people who, whether with the postal or transport problems, are seeing their daily lives disrupted,” Gove told the BBC. “What I want to see is people getting on with their daily lives without problems.”

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