The British government and the unions dig in on train strikes
A battle for public sympathy alongside a dispute over pay and conditions
M ick lynch sounds like a prophet of Britain’s end-times. In interviews the twinkly-eyed secretary-general of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) paints a picture of a country with crumbling Victorian-era infrastructure, mounting inequality and “the ordinary Joe out there on the street, trying to go about their daily life despite all the pressure”. Yet the 40,000-odd RMT railway workers who launched more strikes this week—in the longest of the country’s wave of industrial disputes—are not at the sharpest end of Britain’s problems.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Railing against the system”
From the December 17th 2022 edition
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