Travellers arriving in the UK have been warned of delays and disruption as the Border Force strike begins today.
Border Force workers at airports across the country - including Glasgow, Heathrow and Manchester - will be walking out every day for the rest of the year with the exception of December 27.
Those set to fly in the last days of 2022 have been told to expect delays as long queues at passport control could lead to passengers being held on planes with a knock-on effect on later flights.
The disruption could continue well into 2023, according to the general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union who warned travellers could face 'months' of disruption if the pay dispute continues.
Industrial action is being taken by 1,000 members of the PCS union employed by the Home Office. The strike will also hit Birmingham, Cardiff, Gatwick, Glasgow and Manchester airports, along with the port of Newhaven in East Sussex.
Currently, no flight schedules have been changed and there appears to be no visible impact on passengers. Military personnel and volunteers from the civil service have been trained to check passports.
Around a quarter of a million passengers are arriving on flights at affected airports on Friday, including approximately 10,000 people who landed at Heathrow before 7am.
A spokesman for Gatwick Airport told the PA news agency: "Everything is going okay at the moment. There's plenty of staff. The e-gates are all operating. It's going well.
"There's no delays as far as we’re aware, and no queues at the moment. I'm standing in arrivals and passengers are flowing through as normal."
Meanwhile, postal deliveries and driving lessons are set to be disrupted by strikes in the days before Christmas.
Royal Mail, National Highways and Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) employees are taking industrial action on Friday.
These workers will continue their strike into Saturday, when staff represented by the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union, Abellio London bus workers and Environment Agency employees will also launch separate waves of action.
This follows two days of strikes by NHS staff, as thousands of nurses walked out on Tuesday, and ambulance workers joined picket lines on Wednesday.
PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka warned travellers could face months of disruption unless the Government comes forward with an improved pay offer for Border Force staff.
"We think that the action at the borders is going to be very effective. We hope that the Government will therefore do the right thing and get around the negotiating table and put some money upfront,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
"If not, we are raising money, we have a strike fund that means we can sustain this action. Our strike mandate lasts right up until May. We will be supporting this action up to May and we would re-ballot again if we have to."
He continued: "I think in January what you will see is a huge escalation of this action in the civil service and across the rest of our economy unless the Government get around the negotiating table."
National Highways workers responsible for motorways and major A-roads in London and the South East, also represented by the PCS, will continue their four-day walkout which started on Thursday.
Postmen and women represented by the Communication Workers Union walked out for their fifth day of December action, in a move which Royal Mail criticised as “a cynical attempt to hold Christmas to ransom”.
The company said it will be doing all it can to deliver Christmas mail, revealing that the industrial action has cost it £100 million.
RMT railway workers will stage another strike from 6pm on Christmas Eve, which could prevent people from making it home for Christmas.
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