Public Employees Strike in Britain

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, July 18, 2002

Public Employees Strike in Britain

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Subway workers walked off the job Wednesday evening, following 750,000 municipal employees from across Britain who had staged a one-day strike earlier in the day. London's commuters braced for a miserable, chaotic day of travel.

Some Londoners caught out later were already wrestling with the 24-hour subway strike that began at 8 p.m. when signalers, platform staff and some drivers stopped work.

The Rail, Maritime and Transport Union said subway management failed to arrange full consultation with union safety representatives over the planned partial privatization of the system, known by Londoners as the Tube.

The strike completely shut down the London Underground, which carries an estimated 3 million passengers each day.

Earlier in the day, municipal workers from street sweepers to architects staged a one-day strike, closing schools, libraries and recreation centers in their first national walkout in more than two decades.

The 24-hour strike by municipal workers over pay in England, Wales and Northern Ireland also affected social workers, garbage collectors, school cafeteria workers, librarians and government-employed architects of public housing and public works.

The municipal workers who walked off the job Wednesday, many of them low-paid, want more than the 3 percent increase offered by employers. Local authorities say they cannot afford it and Prime Minister Tony Blair's government shows no inclination to intervene.

The strike was approved by three unions representing 1.2 million workers.

The unions are seeking a 6 percent raise and have rejected the government's 3 percent offer.

The unions have threatened further strikes if the employers do not agree to new talks.

Britain's last national public sector strike was in 1978-79, during what became known as the "Winter of Discontent."

That unrest, which saw uncollected garbage pile up in the streets and corpses go unburied, helped topple the Labor Party government of James Callaghan and elect Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Source: Agencies

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