Strikes and the unions: How have they changed?
This Is Why
Sky News
4.0 • 552 Ratings
🗓️ 13 December 2022
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Unions are making their demands amidst record-breaking inflation and a cost of living crisis. Critics say they’re excessive during a time of instability.
With union membership much lower than the 1970s, technological advances and more people now being able to work from home, can strike action and the unions still have comparable impact?
On the Sky News Daily, Sally Lockwood takes a closer look with our business correspondent Gurpreet Narwan. Economics professor and research fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, Len Shackleton, examines how unions and their impact have changed over the decades. Plus, we speak to Andy Prendergast, the GMB union’s national secretary for commercial services, as we try to find out if there’s a way forward.
Annie Joyce – senior podcast producer
Jada-Kai Meosa John - junior producer
Alys Bowen – interviews producer
Nelly Stefanova and Simon Windsor – archive researchers
Paul Stanworth – editor
Transcript
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| 1:01.7 | Back to one of our top stories this morning. Royal mail workers, they're beginning a new series of |
| 1:06.5 | strikes. Hardly a days gone by lately where strikes haven't been in the headlines, standoffs between government and unions, at a time when the country is facing record-breaking inflation and a cost-of-living crisis. |
| 1:20.1 | We're talking about nurses, rail workers, border force, postal staff, to name just a few. |
| 1:26.5 | As we enter a bleak winter of disruption, comparisons are |
| 1:30.7 | being drawn with the winter of discontent. But a lot has changed since the 1970s, where, as the |
| 1:36.7 | stories went, union bosses would meet ministers for grown-up talks over beer and sandwiches. |
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