London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Oct 09, 2025

Britain braces for winter of strike action as nurses walk out

Britain braces for winter of strike action as nurses walk out

British nurses will go on strike this week, hitting already stretched hospitals and cranking up pressure on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to quell the biggest wave of industrial action to hit the country in decades.

The walkout comes as strikes cripple the rail network and postal service, airports brace for disruption and junior doctors, midwives and teachers prepare to ballot, threatening to further jam up an economy that is likely already in recession.

Unions are seeking double-digit pay rises to keep pace with inflation that hit 11.1% in October, the highest in 41 years.

But the government has so far refused to budge on pay and is instead looking to tighten laws to stop some strikes, meaning there is no end in sight for what has been dubbed a new "winter of discontent" in reference to the industrial battles that gripped Britain in 1978-79.

Strikes are due on each day this month. Union estimates forecast more than 1 million working days will be lost in December, making it the worst month for disruption since July 1989.


NEW ERA


Susan Milner, a professor of European politics and society at the University of Bath, said the current strikes were "very different" to previous bouts, pointing to the wide array of sectors affected and the depth of the cost of living crisis.

"There's the potential for them to stretch out and (for striking workers to) dig themselves in and then that could really be something that we haven't seen for quite a long time," she said.

Walk-outs in rail by RMT members, which started in June, are the union's biggest action for over 30 years, while for nurses, it is the first ever national strike action in the Royal College of Nursing's (RCN) 106-year-old history.

Nurses will walk out on Thursday and the following Tuesday.

Unions say the pay rise offers on the table, many for around 4%, are not enough given that many workers have already gone without any real-term wage growth over the last decade. In many cases, the action is also about working conditions.

"(For nurses) the job is getting harder and harder all of the time for a salary that is worth less and less," Patricia Marquis, director of the RCN in England, said.

The government will hope that the forecast for inflation to start to fall from the middle of 2023 will help.

Sunak, only six weeks into the job, has said the government cannot afford pay rises for public sector workers which cover inflation and has called union leaders unreasonable.

But as strikes lead to non-urgent surgeries being cancelled and longer ambulance waiting times, public anger at the state of the country could force the government to give ground.

Sunak wants to extend laws to maintain some services in transport and could ban strikes in some other sectors. The army will be drafted in to drive ambulances and man airport passport desks during strikes.


MORE PROMINENT UNIONS


The walk-outs end decades of relatively stable industrial relations in Britain, compared to European neighbours such as France and Spain.

However days lost will be far fewer than in the 1970s and 1980s, when almost half of all workers were unionised. Around a quarter are members today.

The 1 million working days expected to be lost to strikes this December compares to the 12 million lost in September 1979, a period in British history known as the "winter of discontent", taken from the opening line of Shakespeare's Richard III.

Still, Berenberg senior economist Kallum Pickering believes unions have a stronger hand in an economy that needs more workers.

"I think the world that we're in is one where we get more prominent union activity," Pickering said. "Workers will have more wage bargaining power in a world of persistent labour shortages."

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
×