Closing summary: Weeks of transport disruption begin
Many of Great Britain’s railway stations were deserted on Tuesday as rail unions began the first of four days of rail strikes this week – and another four over the Christmas period.
About a fifth of services ran across the country, but large parts of rural Britain had no services at all.
The government said it will not back down on pay awards for the public sector in the face of strikes – ahead of imminent action by nurses, ambulance workers, Royal Mail employees, among many others.
Relations between the government and unions were already battered by the first round of rail strikes this summer, and they have worsened with three successive prime ministers this year pledging to crack down on workers’ ability to strike.
The developments today:
The UK recorded the highest number of working days lost to labour disputes in October for more than 10 years, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the ONS said real wages (pay packets after the effects of inflation) fell by 2.7% in the three months to October, “among the largest falls in growth since comparable records began in 2001”.
Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, said the only way the rail strikes will be resolved is if the unions back down. While the government does not directly set pay awards, in practice it has significant influence over the terms the train operating companies can offer.
RMT rail union leader Mick Lynch accused the BBC of “parroting” rightwing propaganda in its coverage of the rail strikes during a series of heated interviews on Tuesday morning – while also having an unusual exchange with ITV presenter Richard Madeley over the meaning of the word “Christmas”.
Lynch said there was “no deal in sight”, although he also separately expressed optimism that later strikes could be averted with some changes to the terms offered by train operating companies.
The Port of Felixstowe has agreed an increased pay deal with workers after they went on strike this summer, its owners claimed.
Physiotherapists in England and Wales voted for strike action, as did midwives in Wales.
That’s all for today from this live blog, but you can continue to follow the Guardian’s coverage from around the world:
In the UK, Rishi Sunak says changes to asylum system should lead to ‘vast majority’ of Albanian applications being refused
In the US, the White House is expected to announce ‘major scientific breakthrough’ on fusion energy
In our coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war, Moscow rejects Zelenskiy peace proposal, saying Kyiv must accept new ‘realities
Thanks for reading today, and do join us tomorrow for more coverage. JJ
Updated
Transport minister Mark Harper was on the broadcast round this morning defending the government as rail unions started 48 hours of strikes.
RMT union leader Mick Lynch said there needed to be modifications of some of the proposals from train companies and an increased pay offer. He also accused the government of obstructing any deal (by insisting the train operating companies include contentious provisions on driver-only operation).
You can watch them both here:
The transport difficulties are not limited to train travel: the RAC had its busiest day ever for breakdowns on Monday, it said.
The motoring company said the cold weather and drivers’ difficulties paying for maintenance during the cost of living crisis were combining to create a “worst-ever winter breakdown cocktail”. It added that strikes on Tuesday and Wednesday could push more people onto the roads, adding to demand.
Rod Dennis, the RAC’s breakdown spokesperson, said:
Yesterday was officially our busiest day for breakdowns on record, with around 12,000 drivers needing help, the equivalent of eight every minute of the day. Even our busiest day during the infamous “beast from the east” in 2018 didn’t see as many people breaking down.
We believe two key ingredients have combined to create the worst-ever winter breakdown cocktail – a sustained period of cold weather with an absence of widespread snow that would otherwise keep people indoors, and a big rise in the number of drivers who can’t afford to maintain their vehicles as we well as they’d like to due to the pandemic and the cost of living crisis.
Today remains an incredibly demanding day for our patrols, with the rail strikes likely to force yet more people onto the roads.
The RAC warned that continued cold temperatures mean icy conditions were likely to remain on many roads, particularly in rural areas.
Updated
Manchester Piccadilly was quieter than normal this afternoon though there were still a good number of travelers in the station.
Some were catching the limited number of trains still operating today while others have had their travel plans derailed.
Khadija Sumeiya Mohamud, 18, a student, was in Manchester for a concert last night and is trying to get back to Stoke-on-Trent today. “It’s such an inconvenience,” she said:
I booked a return ticket for today. I assumed they would only sell this ticket if I could actually get back to where I need to go. I come here today and I go to the platform and I look around and there’s no train. The train was scheduled for platform 5 but, with 10 minutes to go, there was still no train.
She then found out all trains to Stoke-on-Trent were cancelled. “With the cost of living crisis it’s fair enough the train workers are striking. My issue is not with them. I just think I should not have been sold a ticket for a train that is not departing.”
Her only options to get home are to “drive with a stranger, take a coach at midnight or book an Uber.”
Alan Barker, 60, a marine engineer, is travelling to Newcastle.
I was meant to be travelling yesterday but my train got cancelled. I flew in from Sweden to see my son get his doctorate.
I don’t like travelling against the guys on strike. I fully support them in their request for a living wage but I do have to get home.
Barker’s train is still scheduled to go ahead.
Diana, 35, a care worker said: “I was going shopping and usually I’d get off at Victoria. I went to Victoria but on the way back there was no train so I had to get the free bus here. When I got here I’ve had to wait over an hour to get a train.
“It’s a little bit of disruption but I’m not really bothered. I don’t have to do it everyday.”
Rishi Sunak: Government will not shift on rail union negotiations
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reiterated the current government position that it is unable to shift on pay, effectively meaning the only way to end strikes on the railways or other sectors would be for unions to back down.
The winter would be “a challenging period to get through”, according to an official readout of Sunak’s comments to his ministers at Tuesday morning’s cabinet meeting. The readout said:
He added that the government had been fair and reasonable in its approach to agreeing the independent pay review bodies’ recommendations for public sector pay rises, and in facilitating further discussions with the unions and employers.
Sunak told the cabinet: “While the government will do all we can to minimise disruption, the only way we can stop it completely is by unions going back around the table and calling off these strikes.”
Asked if the comments meant the government was effectively powerless to end the public sector strikes in the absence of new laws either outlawing stoppages or setting out minimum service levels, for example for rail, Sunak’s official spokesman said there were plans to mitigate any disruption.
He added: “Beyond that, obviously, it is for unions to decide whether they want to keep inflicting this sort of damage on the public, and indeed on businesses.”
There is, however, no news on when anti-strike legislation could come. It is possible that even basic details of what may be planned, originally pencilled in for before Christmas, could take longer than this.
Updated
NHS physiotherapists are the latest to announce that they intend to strike for better wages – the first time they have balloted over pay.
The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) on Tuesday said physiotherapy staff in 112 organisations in England and in every health board in Wales now have a strike mandate and will begin the process of planning for industrial action in the early new year.
The English ballots had to be run on a “disaggregated” basis, meaning they needed 50% turnout at every individual employer, as well as 40% of eligible to vote voting in favour, the union said. The vote at 92 English employers did not reach those thresholds.
Jill Taylor, a specialist NHS physiotherapist and chair of the CSP’s employment committee, said:
Our members have spoken resoundingly. We have never balloted over pay but physiotherapy staff are now left with no choice. We are short-staffed, overworked, exhausted.
Delivering excellent care for our patients is our highest priority – and to do this we need more staff – we need to attract people to the NHS and we need to keep people in the NHS. We simply cannot do this until the government gives NHS staff a fairer pay award.
Felixstowe port owner claims to have reached 8.5% pay deal after summer strikes
The owner of the Port of Felixstowe has said it has reached a pay agreement with workers, after strikes in the summer.
Hutchison Ports, which is controlled by the Hong Kong-based company CK Hutchison, said on Tuesday that over 90% of workers at the Port of Felixstowe had voted to accept a pay deal of 8.5% plus an extra £1,000 payment from 1 January 2023.
Unite, the union representing 1,900 workers at the port, has been contacted for comment.
The union had previously rejected an offer of 7% and an extra £500, and it called an eight-day strike at the end of August. It was the first strike at the port, which handles nearly half of the containerised freight entering the UK, since 1989.
Robert Ashton, the chief operating officer at the Port of Felixstowe, said in a statement:
We are pleased to have reached an agreement on the 2023 pay deal. This is the earliest we have concluded an annual pay review and it provides welcome certainty and stability at a time when our employees, like everyone else, are facing an increase in the cost of living.
Updated
Rail union TSSA announces new strike starting on Boxing Day
The rail union TSSA has notified the rail company CrossCountry that it will also take 24 hours of strike action starting on Boxing Day, adding further to the disruption over the Christmas period.
The strikes will begin at 9pm on Boxing Day for 24 hours, and replace earlier strikes planned at CrossCountry by TSSA on 17 December.
The TSSA action partly overlaps with action by the RMT and continues into 27 December as TSSA-only strike action, the union said. That could mean longer disruption for passengers of CrossCountry.
CrossCountry runs services ranging from Cornwall, to the Midlands, Wales, and northern England through to Scottish cities as far north as Aberdeen. It is owned by Arriva, which is owned in turn by Germany’s state-owned rail company, Deutsche Bahn.
TSSA will take strike action @CrossCountryUK on Boxing Day and 27 December as part of the ongoing national dispute over pay, job security and conditions. Full story - 💥🚆👇https://t.co/oNpME98xej
— TSSA (@TSSAunion) December 13, 2022
The union said it represented workers such as customer service managers (CSM), driver managers, trainers and others working on control, timetabling and planning. The managers are based at main rail stations from Edinburgh to Newcastle, Bristol to Bournemouth. Other staff are based at Cannon House in Birmingham and the Lampblock alongside Birmingham New Street station.
Nadine Rae, TSSA’s organising director, said:
Our members at CrossCountry do not want to strike, especially over the Christmas holiday period, but they are sick and tired of being taken for granted.
They deserve a pay rise to help manage the escalating cost of living, and they rightly demand job security. The company, like all the train operators under the control of the Department for Transport, needs to face up to the fact that only serious offers which meet our aspirations will end this dispute.
Rail workers are seeking basic fair treatment: not to be sacked from their jobs; a fair pay rise in the face of a cost-of-living-crisis; and no race to the bottom on terms and conditions.
Updated
The transport secretary, Mark Harper, has refused to deny that the government blocked a possible offer by train companies to unions, after the RMT accused the government of deliberately blocking a deal.
The RMT has said that the government insisted that the Rail Delivery Group, which represents train companies, include a contentious provision allowing driver-only operation of trains. The union has been bitterly opposed to driver-only operation for years, arguing that it would endanger passengers, worsen conditions for drivers and cause job losses.
Harper declined to answer questions on whether the government had insisted on the driver-only operation clauses. Speaking this morning to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he repeatedly said that “reform” had been a longstanding issue in negotiations.
He said:
Reform has been on the table from the beginning of this process. […] We’ve got to have reform to outdated working practices on the rail network to have a better rail service that delivers better services that passengers can count on at a price that is affordable to the taxpayer. So reform has been on the table all the way through this process.
Updated
The scene across the UK’s railways is, as you can probably imagine, pretty empty. The above is from Reading in Berkshire.
London’s Paddington station, usually a busy hub connecting the capital to the West of England, is all but deserted.
The RMT, the union which called the strikes, has posted pictures of workers on picket lines around the country on Twitter, including pictures from Newcastle, Plymouth and Leeds.
Newcastle Rail & Catering Branch members on the Newcastle picket line this morning outside Newcastle Central Station. Despite the cold members remain red-hot in their determination to defend their jobs, pay and conditions. #SupportRailWorkers pic.twitter.com/hYGWt7j7Bu
— RMT (@RMTunion) December 13, 2022
@RMTunion Plymouth Picket line rock solid this morning ✊️ pic.twitter.com/REKCqF3WVP
— Dave Goard RMT South West NEC (@DaveGoardRMT) December 13, 2022
Its cold in Leeds this morning @RMTunion 🥶🥶 ✊️✊️ pic.twitter.com/jFodnRCmoK
— sarah woolley (@sarahwoolley01) December 13, 2022
There is similar pessimism about the prospects for a deal to prevent later rail strikes from the other side of the table.
Asked if there is a glimmer of hope in the negotiations, Network Rail chief executive Andrew Haines earlier this morning told BBC Breakfast (via PA Media):
It’s hard to see that today. I’ve learned, you know, through a long career, that sometimes the light is just around the corner.
But where I stand today, I’d have to say that with the level of disruption the RMT are imposing, the way forward isn’t obvious.
Mick Lynch: 'no deal in sight'
RMT leader Mick Lynch has said there is “no deal in sight” between the rail companies and the union representing rail employees.
The union has previously argued that the government has deliberately blocked a potential agreement between unions and the rail companies. Lynch has asked to meet Rishi Sunak for talks, a request that has been refused.
Asked if the public can expect more strikes in 2023, on Tuesday he told Press Association:
Well, we hope not. We want to get a deal but at the moment, there is no deal in sight.
So we’ve got the schedule down at the moment, which is running for the next four weeks. We will review that at the end of that if there’s no settlement on the table and we’ll decide what our next steps are, but at the moment there is no settlement to be had.
Updated
Highest level of strike action since 2011 in October, says ONS
The UK recorded the highest number of working days lost to labour disputes in October for more than 10 years, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported on Tuesday, as rail workers began the first day of eight on strike action within the next four weeks.
There were 417,000 working days lost because of labour disputes in October 2022, which is the highest since November 2011, when almost 1m days were lost during a huge strike over cuts to public sector pensions brought in under David Cameron and George Osborne’s austerity policies.
Union estimates forecast more than 1m working days will be lost in December, making it the worst month for disruption since July 1989.
The ONS stopped collecting the strikes data during coronavirus lockdowns, as it focused its resources elsewhere. In recent months, however, the need for the data has grown more pressing.
A million lost days would be huge in the context of the last 20 years, but on the timeframe of the last century it would barely register. Here is the picture from the 1930s, when the labour disputes data were first collected. Note that these data start a few years after the UK’s general strike of 1926, when millions of people went on strike for nine days.
Updated
The RMT general secretary, Mick Lynch, has been on a broadcast round this morning, with some combative exchanges in interviews, as ever.
Lynch told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the union had “massive support” from its members in favour of strike action, while also criticising the broadcaster itself for what he saw as repetition of government criticisms of striking workers.
In response to a question on whether support for strike action among workers was declining, Lynch said:
We will continue with our campaign until our members say they are ready to settle. What the companies need to do is think about putting some stuff on the table that is not dictated by the government.
The government needs to facilitate a settlement by saying, ‘Let’s get real, and let’s put some stuff to the RMT that we know they can cope with and deal with, and that their members are likely to support.’ Until they do that we won’t have a settlement.
He also had another unusual exchange with Richard Madeley, the host of ITV’s Good Morning Britain, on the meaning of Christmas. (Lynch and Madeley have previous – Lynch in June said the presenter came up with “the most remarkable twaddle”.)
'Will you answer the question Mr Lynch, I won't let you get away with nonsense'@richardm56 grills the General Secretary of the RMT, Mick Lynch over striking over the Christmas period pic.twitter.com/htcqFREQM9
— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) December 13, 2022
Updated
As the strikes by members of the RMT at Network Rail and 14 train operators got under way, only about a fifth of train services are expected to be running around the country on those days.
Trains will run between 7.30am and 6.30pm with a reduced service on main intercity and urban lines, with no trains at all in much of rural England, Scotland and Wales.
Network Rail warned that first trains will start later and the last trains will leave much earlier. Disruption should also be expected in the morning of the day after each strike.
Transport secretary Mark Harper said people faced another Covid-style “virtual Christmas” as a result of the rail strikes. He told GB News the pay offer to rail workers was “in line with the sort of pay rises which are taking place in the private sector”.
Harper said:
These rail strikes are going to force some families to have another virtual Christmas and I think that is terrible when the unions have had a very reasonable pay offer.
TUC leader: 'Pay more to help UK through recession'
The TUC general secretary, Frances O’Grady, has said the government should negotiate “fair pay rises” with unions as the UK braces for economic recession.
The UK economy returned to growth in October after the additional bank holiday for the Queen’s funeral the month before. However, the government and many economists expect a difficult year ahead. The consensus among 15 forecasts collated by the government is for GDP to fall by 0.8% next year.
O’Grady said:
2022 has been the worst year for real wage growth in nearly half a century. We are now on the brink of a damaging recession with the threat of one million lost jobs.
Ministers must act now to put money in people’s pockets – starting with boosting the minimum wage and giving our public sector workers a pay rise to match the cost of living.
And the prime minister should stop attacking working people trying to defend their pay, and sit down to negotiate fair pay rises with unions.
Updated
Across Great Britain’s railways Tuesday’s strike is the first day of eight planned days of disruption within the next four weeks.
In practice the disruption usually spills over into the following days as well, as trains are often not in the correct places when workers return.
The strike dates for the railways are:
Tuesday 13 and Wednesday 14 December 2022
Friday 16 and Saturday 17 December 2022
Tuesday 3 and Wednesday 4 January 2023
Friday 6 and Saturday 7 January 2023
Updated
UK strikes calendar: nurses, post, and transport workers to take further action
The train strikes starting today will be only the first day of planned disruption across the UK’s railways. And rail workers are not the only ones taking action: there are major strikes planned every day this month.
Nurses, ambulance workers, Royal Mail employees, and big chunks of the civil service will strike for higher pay this month alone.
Here is the full calendar:
Updated
The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has responded to the data showing the steep decline in real wages. Though he does not mention them explicitly, the comments are very relevant to the train strikes.
The government argues that its focus should be on reducing inflation, and that means that it cannot agree to large pay increases for public-sector workers (or those over whose pay it has influence, such as rail employees). Yet that argument is strenuously rejected by unions and many economists, who point out that a below-inflation pay increase is not likely to push up prices across the economy.
Hunt said:
While unemployment in the UK remains close to historic lows, high inflation continues to plague economies around the world as we manage the impacts of Covid-19 and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
To get the British economy back on track, we have a plan which will help to more than halve inflation next year - but that requires some difficult decisions now. Any action that risks embedding high prices into our economy will only prolong the pain for everyone, and stunt any prospect of long-term economic growth.
With job vacancies at near record highs, we are committed to helping people back into work, and helping those in employment to raise their incomes, progress in work, and become financially independent.
Updated
Two days of rail strikes begin amid UK real wage decline
Much of the UK’s rail network has ground to a halt as members of the RMT union begin a two-day strike on Tuesday, the first in a series of planned actions as they push for better pay.
The rising cost of living – particularly via increased energy costs – has been a key factor behind the strike action. New data on Tuesday morning from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show the impact: real wages (pay packets after the effects of inflation) fell by 2.7% in the three months to October.
The ONS said the real wage fall was up there with the biggest declines on record. Real regular pay fell by 3% between April and June this year, but the most recent decline “still remains among the largest falls in growth since comparable records began in 2001”.
Network Rail’s update told travellers that it was “inevitable that services will be cancelled or severely disrupted”.
RMT members voted to reject a last pay offer from Network Rail on Monday.
Mick Lynch, the RMT general secretary, last night said:
This is a huge rejection of Network Rail’s substandard offer and shows that our members are determined to take further strike action in pursuit of a negotiated settlement.
The government is refusing to lift a finger to prevent these strikes and it is clear they want to make effective strike action illegal in Britain.
We will resist that and our members, along with the entire trade union movement will continue their campaign for a square deal for workers, decent pay increases and good working conditions.
You can read the full story on yesterday’s last-ditch pay negotiations here:
Updated
