Hundreds of thousands strike over UK pension cuts

British police offi­cers remove a pro­tester from the street as a group took part in a protest to mark a nation­wide day of strikes in Lon­don, Thursday.

JILL LAWLESS

Asso­ci­ated Press

LONDON — Hun­dreds of thou­sands of British teach­ers and pub­lic sec­tor work­ers swapped class­rooms and offices for picket lines Thurs­day in what unions hope will be the first salvo in a sum­mer of dis­con­tent against the Conservative-led government’s aus­ter­ity plans.

Air­port oper­a­tors had warned there could be long lines at immi­gra­tion entry points because of walk­outs by pass­port offi­cers, but most of Britain’s air­ports, includ­ing London’s Heathrow and Man­ches­ter, said it was busi­ness as usual.

One union leader esti­mated more than 500,000 teach­ers and civil ser­vants joined the one-day strike, affect­ing cour­t­houses, tax offices and employ­ment cen­ters, as well as schools. The gov­ern­ment esti­mated 100,000 strik­ers — although its tally did not include teach­ers, whose walk­out closed or dis­rupted 11,000 schools in Eng­land and Wales.

“This is the best-supported strike we’ve ever had,” union leader Mark Ser­wotka told Chan­nel 4 News.

But the gov­ern­ment dis­puted the claims, say­ing the strike wasn’t as well-supported as the unions were mak­ing it out to be.

“Very few civil ser­vants wanted this strike at all,” Cab­i­net Office min­is­ter Fran­cis Maude said in a statement.

Small groups of anti-capitalist pro­test­ers scuf­fled with police as the march neared Par­lia­ment, and were cor­doned in by offi­cers. Police said 41 peo­ple had been arrested over the past 24 hours, although the demon­stra­tions were over­whelm­ingly peaceful.

The gov­ern­ment insists every­one must share the pain as it cuts 80 bil­lion pounds ($130 bil­lion) from pub­lic spend­ing to reduce Britain’s huge deficit, swollen after the gov­ern­ment spent bil­lions bail­ing out founder­ing banks. It is cut­ting civil ser­vice jobs and ben­e­fits, rais­ing the state pen­sion age from 65 to 66, hik­ing the amount pub­lic sec­tor employ­ees con­tribute to pen­sions and reduc­ing their retire­ment payouts.

But Britain is not Greece, whose crip­pling debt cri­sis has led to vio­lent protests. Britain’s econ­omy remains weak as it emerges from reces­sion, but the gen­eral mood is one of appre­hen­sion rather than anger.

Ear­lier in the day, Ser­wotka said that offi­cials were duck­ing the real issues.

“It’s time for the gov­ern­ment to engage prop­erly,” he said. “It has shown it is unwill­ing to move on any of the cen­tral issues — that pub­lic sec­tor work­ers will have to work up to eight years longer, thou­sands of jobs are at stake, lower pen­sions are set to cost three times as much, and pay is frozen while infla­tion soars.

Craig Phe­lan, a pro­fes­sor of mod­ern his­tory at Kingston Uni­ver­sity, says atti­tudes have changed dra­mat­i­cally since the 1980s, when unions took on Prime Min­is­ter Mar­garet Thatcher’s gov­ern­ment in grind­ing con­flicts like a year­long min­ers’ strike — and lost. Then, more than 13 mil­lion Britons were union mem­bers. Now the fig­ure is about 7 million.

“Peo­ple see unions as some­thing other, some­one who wants to take their money, some­one who wants to incon­ve­nience them, some­one who doesn’t want to work as hard as they do,” Phe­lan said.

It’s a hard atti­tude for unions to over­turn, and they are mov­ing with caution.

Lon­don police said almost all of its civil­ian staff who answer emer­gency and non-emergency calls had walked out. The force drafted in police offi­cers to cover the short­fall. Even employ­ees at Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron’s office walked out on the job — although offi­cials put the fig­ure at “fewer than five.”

While some British trade unions — such as those rep­re­sent­ing Lon­don sub­way dri­vers — have a rep­u­ta­tion for fre­quent strikes, their pub­lic sec­tor coun­ter­parts are tra­di­tion­ally mod­er­ate. There has not been a national strike by teach­ers since the 1980s, and for one of the unions, the Asso­ci­a­tion of Teach­ers and Lec­tur­ers, Thurs­day was its first strike in its 127-year history.

Their lead­ers say they have no choice, say­ing their mem­bers worked many years for mod­est pay, on the promise of a solid pen­sion, and accuse the gov­ern­ment of reneg­ing on that deal.

Helen Andrews of the National Union of Teach­ers told a rally in Man­ches­ter that teach­ers were being asked to “pay more, work longer, get less.”

“David Cameron has accused teach­ers of a lack of moral­ity,” she said. “Who really lacks moral­ity? The thief or those who try to stop the thief?”

Posted by AP News on Jun 30 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.