Einar H. Dyvik
Research expert covering Nordics and global data for society, economy, and politics
Industrial action in the UK - Statistics & Facts
Since 2022, workers in the United Kingdom have staged a series of strikes over their pay and working conditions. In December 2022 for example, there were approximately 830,000 working days lost due to labor disputes, with 155,000 workers being on strike in that month. This was the peak, in terms of working days lost in this surge in industrial action that continued throughout 2023 and into 2024. The first wave of these strikes began in May 2022 when the UK's largest transport union; the RMT, voted to go on strike in the following month. Industrial action has also spread to other sectors in the UK, with workers in health, education, and many other sectors opting to strike during this period.
What are the main reasons for the recent wave of strikes?
Falling wages, as well as disputes about working conditions are the overriding factors that explain the current wave of industrial action. While wages were generally growing before late 2021, high levels of inflation outpaced this growth for a long period between November 2021 and May 2023. Additionally, wages in the UK's public sector, which many of the striking industries generally belong to, trailed the private sector for most of this period. Due to the ongoing cost of living crisis, there has been a degree of solidarity with the strikers in the UK, with many feeling the same pressures impacting their standard of living. There is evidence that this does vary by industry however, with a late 2022 survey indicating that support was strongest for Nurses going on strike, and weakest for Barristers. Furthermore, the disruption caused by industrial action may be gradually eroding this support, with the share of people who support more restrictions on strikes increasing from 21 percent in December 2021, to 34 percent as of October 2024.Long-term decline in trade union membership
The number of people who were members of a trade union grew steadily in the United Kingdom from the late 19th Century onwards, eventually reaching a peak of 13.2 million members in 1980. Since that year, the number of trade union members had declined, falling to 6.7 million members by 2021, or around 23.1 percent of the overall workforce. Alongside this fall in membership there has been a decline in the number of trade unions in the UK, with 128 trade unions in 2024, compared with 237 in 1999. The merger of smaller trade unions into larger ones has also influenced this decline, with a series of mergers between 2002 and 2007 making UNITE one of the largest trade unions. A more recent merger of the National Union of Teachers, and Association of Teachers and Lecturers resulted in the formation of the National Education Union (NEU) in 2017, making it the fifth-largest union in terms of membership.
