Over the past winter it has felt that scarcely a day has gone by without one or other — and on bad days several — vital public services being hobbled by industrial action.
Today’s figures from the ONS show that days lost to labour disputes last year ran at their highest since 1989. It all feels wearily disruptive, particularly on rail strike days in London, and probably contributed to the bigger-than-expected fall in GDP in December.
But we are not yet back to the days of prolonged labour strife of a generation ago. While it is true that days lost to labour disputes almost doubled in December to 843,000, it is still well below the 2.42 million of July 1989, a month blighted by a national rail strike.
Indeed, throughout the Seventies and Eighties, “million day months” were common as one heavily unionised industry after another staged huge walk-outs typically in response to threatened mass job losses.
The peak came in September 1979, shortly after Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives were first returned to Downing Street, when days lost totalled a remarkable 11.7 million. Strikes also tended to be longer and were often continuous, unlike today’s 24 and 48-hour stoppages that make the point, but are far less ruinous for the pay packets of union members.
The mid-Eighties miners’ strike lasted almost exactly a year. What is perhaps most noticeable about today’s data from the ONS is the remarkable level of industrial harmony that the country has enjoyed in the last three decades.
Days lost to disputes are in the single figure thousands in many months.
The situation is certainly very different now as workers understandably protest about cuts to their living standards.
But we are still far from the high-water mark of labour unrest when union bosses made the country close to ungovernable.
