Liberalism and the right to strike

Abstract

Although trade union membership in the UK went into serious decline in the decades following the Conservative election victory of 1979, recent years have seen an increase. Strikes nowadays are typically lesser in scale and duration than the big strikes of the twentieth century. The law on ballot thresholds under the Trade Union Act 2016 represents a formidable obstacle. Nevertheless, strikes remain common. In the first ten weeks of 2022, BBC News reported on strikes by gritters in Carmarthenshire (GMB), stationary manufacturers in Dalkeith (Unite), bin lorry drivers in Coventry (Unite), staff in higher education (UCU), teachers at a private school in Norwich (NASUWT), confectionary makers in York (GMB), workers on the London Underground (RMT), and refuse collectors in Wiltshire (GMB). (The European Trade Union Institute strike map of Europe shows that in the two decades to 2019 strikes generated higher average numbers of lost work days per 1,000 employees in many Mediterranean and Nordic countries than in the UK.)