UK passport office staff launches five-week strike over pay. In a long-running disagreement with the government about wages and conditions, passport office employees in the UK are going on a strike as the cost-of-living crisis impinges on people’s daily lives.
At eight locations, more than 1,000 members of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) will quit their jobs on Monday, joining hundreds of other civil employees who have been calling for greater pay in response to the UK’s skyrocketing inflation.
Picket lines will be set up outside of offices in Glasgow, Durham, Liverpool, Southport, Peterborough, London, Belfast, and Newport in Wales, according to a strike fund that has been established by the PSC.
As UK passport office staff had launched a five-week strike over pay, the PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka has urged the government to hold negotiations immediately to try to end the impasse.
As a result of negotiations with other trade unions that resulted in better salary offers, he has charged the government with discriminating against the public sector as a whole.
The PCS is scaling up strikes, with a nationwide walkout of more than 130,000 civil servants scheduled for April 28. As a result, today’s strikes are not expected to be the end of the story.
After a larger industrial action by UK employees at Heathrow Airport, where 1,400 security guards left their positions to seek higher pay, the PCS members are currently on strike.
Thousands of workers are striking for better pay and working conditions as a result of the rising costs of commodities across the majority of UK sectors.
According to unions, earnings have decreased in real terms over the past ten years, particularly in the public sector, and many people are finding it difficult to make ends meet due to a cost-of-living crisis brought on by drastically rising food and energy prices.
In January, the annual inflation rate in Britain was 10.1%. Pay rises, according to the Conservative government, would raise inflation even further.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has rejected demands for big pay hikes in the public sector, saying they are unaffordable and will fuel inflation.
The UK government and teaching unions earlier this month agreed to hold “intensive talks” a day after health unions said they had reached a deal on pay.
But teacher union leaders said Monday that they rejected the latest pay offer and announced further walkouts.
The government had offered teachers a £1,000 ($1,231) one-off payment for the current school year and an average rise of 4.5 percent pay rise for next year.
But National Education Union (NEU) members in England voted to turn down the deal and to strike on April 27 and May 2.
“The offer shows an astounding lack of judgment and understanding of the desperate situation in the education system,” said Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, joint general secretaries of the NEU.
