Tens of thousands of workers, including teachers, subway drivers, doctors and civil servants, carry out a strike this Wednesday in the United Kingdom to demand a wage increase coinciding with the presentation of the conservative government’s budget. This is a new protest, after the one held at the beginning of February when half a million people mobilized in the busiest march in 10 years.
This is one of the most important days of mobilization in the country, which has been registering a wave of protests for months. The UK is facing rising food and energy prices, with a inflation installed above 10%.
In London the tube was practically without activity due to the strike of the drivers. The doctors of the hospitals have been mobilized since Monday. The officials They also participate in the protest.
Tens of thousands of civil servants are forced to request assistance at food banks and others are “skipping meals”, denounced Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS, the majority union in the sector, to Sky News.
In addition, many workers protested over working conditions, security and pensions. Among the groups mobilized are academics, also journalists from the BBC and railway employees.
Ben Millis, a 25-year-old public administration project manager, said the country is witnessing an “incredible wave of activism.”
“The prices of everything have risen a lot, and this is the longest wage freeze… since there are wage records,” he told AFP amid a demonstration to which whistles and drums rang.
“I think that people are beginning to feel that something has to change and that we have to organize ourselves,” he concluded.
Budget 2023 with financial assistance
In parallel to the protests, the Finance Minister, Jeremy Hunt, presented the budget where he estimated a investment of 94,000 million pounds (107,700 million euros) in two years to shore up purchasing power.
Hunt told Parliament that the UK will not fall into a “technical recession this year”, contrary to previous forecasts.
The British economy will contract by 0.2% this year due to weak activity in the first quarter, the minister specified, based on new projections from the OBR, the public fiscal forecasting agency.
The usual definition of a recession consists of at least two consecutive quarters of contraction of the Gross Domestic Product.
“The British economy contradicts those who doubted it,” he emphatically told Parliament.
Inflation in the UK
In response to pressure from the inflation that is above 10%the government announced this Wednesday that it is extending a cap on energy prices for households for three months.
The Finance Minister added that according to OBR forecasts, the inflation that is undermining the purchasing power of the British, will go “from 10.7% in the last quarter of last year to 2.9% by the end of 2023.”
“In the face of the cost-of-living crisis… we have demonstrated our values by protecting families in distress,” Hunt said. in a speech in which he highlighted energy aid and also subsidies for daycare centers in a country that has one of the “most expensive systems in the world.”
The government intends to implement tax incentives for the creation of nurseries and increase the places. “For many women, a pause in their career means an end to their career,” admitted the minister.
Coinciding with Hunt’s speech to Parliament, hundreds of civil servants marched on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Downing Street office chanting: “What do we want? 10%! When? Now”, in reference to a salary adjustment due to inflation.
Source: Ambito
