On March 15, 2023, on the day the government announced its annual budget, a large strike took place which brought together workers in the healthcare, teaching, civil service and transport sectors. It marked a further consolidation, and intensification of the struggles which got underway in 2022.

The wave of protests, which is increasingly involving sectors of the professional classes and white - collar workers, has been caused by a massive rise in the cost of living, notably in the crucial areas of food, fuel and accommodation. To this can be added the reductions in pensions, and a generalized intensification of labor, with workers being asked to work at an increasingly inhumane pace, and subjected to demoralizing micro - management in the workplace.

With most of the striking sectors in the public sector, or closely linked to the State in some way, the government has been refusing to negotiate directly, thus drawing out the negotiations so that the unions are more likely to fall foul of trade union legislation, in particular on the expiry dates that legislation sets on the validity of ballots for industrial action.

Strikes in the Schools

The National Education Union (NEU) is one of the unions that participated in the strike on March 15, receiving exceptionally strong support in the ballot for strike action from workers in 23,400 schools in England and Wales.

Last September, many teachers received a pay raise but lower than the high levels of inflation. On March 28, considering the solidity of the strike on the 15th, the NEU asked its members to reject the government’s offer of a 4.3% pay raise and an additional £1,000 payment.

On March 16, the teachers in the NEU were joined on strike by members of the University and College Union (UCU), which had already been calling strikes over the past 5 years, but this current action marks their biggest yet. In February they announced that 70,000 staff at 150 universities would strike for 18 days, commencing on February 1. On March 16 they announced that they would be balloting for further industrial action. This followed a provocative move on the part of the UCEA - the University and College Employers’ Association - which had instructed their members to go ahead with implementing an earlier 4 - 5% offer which the Union had already clearly rejected.

The NEU has been trying - unsuccessfully, like other sectors - to negotiate directly with the government, and has rejected the mediation of independent pay - review bodies, since in reality these bodies are not independent at all as the government appoints their members and establishes the “viability” of any wage increases.

So then. Generalized discontent is rampant across the educational sector and seems set to continue.

In the Health Sector

March 15 also marked the final day of a 3 - day strike by junior doctors organized in the British medical Association (BMA). Junior doctors make up 45% of the medical workforce and ⅔ of them are members of the British Medical Association (BMA) or of the Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association (HCSA). The latter went on strike for the first time on the 15th.

The doctors denounce the dangerous levels of understaffing, increasing workloads and low salaries, reduced by more than a quarter since 2008. They are threatening that “without change they will leave the NHS or leave the country entirely for better - paid medical jobs elsewhere”.

And on top of that a junior doctor, at the end of his training, may be saddled with a £100,000 debt to pay off, due to the expenses incurred due to insufficient pay. It’s no wonder then that so many medical doctors are to be found among the ranks of the workers’ parties, from the time of Chartism onward!

Following the strike on the 15th, the BMA called another junior doctors’ strike, this time lasting four days, from April 11 - 15. The previous strike had lasted 3 days. Adherence to the latter was almost unanimous and involved the postponement of almost 200 thousand non - urgent medical and surgical health appointments across the country. The BMA union is calling for the salaries of medical personnel to be tied to the levels of inflation. Similar requests have been made by the nurses, who were on strike a few weeks before. The government would like to settle the question with a miserable lump sum as a sweetener.

For the first time in many years the life expectancy of the less well - off is going down, associated with the growing economic divide and the relative impoverishment of large strata of the population, along with insufficient investment in healthcare. In the healthcare system the lack of staff is dramatic, including an estimated deficit of 10,000 doctors and 40,000 nurses. After the suspension of the activity of the local health authority and non - emergency visits during COVID there has been no large - scale recovery, the waiting lists are getting longer and visits by GPs are still below pre - pandemic levels. The result - as evidenced by further studies - is an increase in mortality associated with diverse pathologies, such as lung cancer (with mortalities within 90 days of diagnosis having increased from 20% to 30% in two years).

In the Civil Service

On March 15 civil servants from 123 government departments also joined the strike. In their tens of thousands they joined the picket lines and lunchtime rallies in Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Manchester. In London they rallied outside Downing Street to call on the government to meet their demands for fair pay, adequate pensions and job security.

Thousands of members of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), which organizes workers in both the private and public sectors, then went on to Trafalgar Square to attend the joint union rally, where workers from the RMT (National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers) and ASLEF (train operators) were also present.

The PCS went on to extend its strike throughout the month of April, which will include another all - out strike by 133,000 civil and public servants on April 28. Workers in the Passport Office went on strike for 5 weeks until May 6. On Monday members working for Ofgem in Canary Wharf and Glasgow announced 6 days of strike action from April 10 - 14 and on April 17 as well.

Strikes in the Transport Sector

ASLEF members on London Underground were also out on a 24 - hour strike on March 15. The Tube train drivers voted by 99% in favor of strike action out of a turnout of 77%. ASLEF members in other roles on the Underground - including Test Train and Engineering train drivers and those in management grades - also voted in favor of strikes by similar margins and will join in striking on the same day.

The management of TfL (Transport for London), pleading financial difficulties following the pandemic, has already forced through cuts to safety training under the guise of “modernization” and “flexibility” and wants to replace the agreed upon attendance and discipline policies, as well as slashing pension benefits.

The trade unionists however declare that they are “always prepared to discuss and negotiate on changes, but that their members want an unequivocal commitment from TfL that management will not continue to force through detrimental changes without agreement”.

The RMT also organizes on the tube, like ASLEF, and will take strike action on March 15 in a row over pensions, job losses and contractual agreements. London Underground Ltd (LUL) have started to impose 600 station staff job losses and have refused to rule out attacks on pensions or ripping up agreements on conditions of work, despite discussions with the union.

A common factor running through the disputes of the last month, in fact in almost all labor disputes, is the question of “affordability”: the employers argue that there simply isn’t enough money to pay for higher wages. Behind all these arguments there lurks a conflict between classes: workers have no choice but to fight for decent living and working conditions, but their needs stand in direct contradiction with capital’s need to squeeze as much surplus value as they possibly can out of the workers, in a word, to make a profit.

The current struggles, both in the UK and elsewhere, are making clear that the problem is a general one and must be addressed as such.

The capitalists, who had to organize themselves to throw off the shackles of feudalism and recruited the working classes to help them do it, now have nothing further to offer humanity, and they need to be overthrown in their turn.

Whatever the individual successes that emerge from the present wave of strikes in terms of immediate gains, they will have been achieved by class struggle. This struggle will grow by means of the increasing co - ordination between the different sectors of the working class, straddling sectoral, professional and craft limitations, cutting across local, regional and national barriers, because their problems are essentially the same. In fact, details aside, the demands made by all the sectors currently taking part in strike actions appear remarkably similar.

But for these demands to be met on a stable and long - term basis, this same complete solidarity will need to face the question of the need for a general social plan, a political one, that faces the necessity of overthrowing the current regime, which supports the needs of the capitalists but not of the workers. The workers, protagonists of ever - broadening struggles, and today in the United Kingdom refusing to be discouraged by highly restrictive trade union laws, will need to link up their defensive struggles, rooted in economic factors, with the class party, the International Communist Party.

This organ of the working class is the essential instrument required to fight for a society that puts the needs of human beings front and center, and doesn’t say, as the opportunist Labour Party does, that all that is needed is to tinker with the capitalists’ laws in order to create a “fairer” capitalism. Capitalism cannot be fair and never has been!

Let us therefore maintain our nerves and prepare, in today’s struggles, to overthrow capitalism!