Weekly Blog - 5 December 2022 - Strikes
Strikes
Many countries around the world are being hit by a massive wave of strikes. In the UK alone, nurses, ambulance workers, lawyers, train drivers, postal workers, bus drivers, highway workers, driving examiners, teachers, university lecturers, baggage handlers, border force and more are all taking strike action.
The strikes are being driven by two factors. Firstly, in many countries like the UK, public services have faced massive spending cuts in recent years since the financial crisis in 2008-9. Twelve years of cuts and austerity have reduced salaries and service and safety levels drastically, almost to the point of collapse, driving dedicated staff to the extreme measure of strikes. Secondly, inflation is driving up the cost of living around the world, hitting the very poorest, hardest. Food prices, and those of other basic essentials are rocketing. Fuel and energy prices are rising to incredible levels. Wages cannot keep up, and we are therefore seeing a new wave of strikes from workers who desperately need pay increases to help them manage the soaring cost of living.
This week, Arise’s weekly blog considers a Christian view on striking, and how we might address the two root causes of the current wave of strikes.
The role of strikes and trade unions
Given its historical context, the Bible does not address the issue of striking directly. However, it is very clear that workers should work hard, but also that employers should provide fair pay and good, safe working environments. The Bible also shows us that in the face of injustice, Christians and all people should use peaceful bottom-up means of resistance and speaking out in advocacy to get reform from those in authority.
In the Arise Manifesto (Arise’s big picture, researched, Biblical, holistic and practical vision for a better world) we take Biblical principles like these, and then look at what history teaches us about how they can best be put into practice. When we do this, we see that membership of trade unions, and the strategic use of strikes by those trade unions, is one of the key factors which has helped drive massive improvements in worker rights, fair wages and reductions in inequality around the world over the last 200 years. Trade unions have often been one of the major groups (alongside churches and Christians) in bottom up peaceful reform movements which are the main driver of better social justice; more human rights and democracy; and improved governance in our world. Strikes have been one of the key tactics such movements have used. The right to join trade unions and the right to strike are fundamental and important ones. Governments and business leaders should engage constructively with such unions, negotiate, and find fair compromises and pragmatic ways forward.
Tackling the root causes 1: investing in good public services
The first major step in tackling the root causes of the current strikes would be a sustained and significant investment in public services in the UK, and many other countries around the world, to begin to make up for years of neglect. Good public services, funded through effective, fair and progressive taxation, have played a huge role in reducing poverty and inequality in nations all around the world in the twentieth and twenty first centuries. Public services, targeted at those in greatest need in society, such as healthcare, education, pensions and unemployment, low-income and incapacity payments play a crucial role in modern societies. Such public services need investment paid for by higher tax levels for earners at the top of the scale, and more taxes focused on capital and unearned inherited wealth rather than income, which don’t discourage healthy economic activity. Indeed, good public services actually strengthen national economies, by providing a healthy, educated and trained workforce, and public infrastructure, both which are crucial for a thriving private sector. Taxation and social spending is one of four shifts that Arise has identified in its 4 Shifts Campaign as essential for providing healthy and flourishing economies and societies, which benefit all, not just those at the top.
Tackling the root causes 2: driving down inflation
The world is reeling from the impacts of staggering rises in global inflation. In the UK inflation is currently at 11.1%. The Bank of England predicts it will rise even higher, to over 13%. Across Europe, the US and much of the rest of the world, inflation is at similar levels. Wages can’t possibly keep up with the cost of living increases that inflation is driving. Tackling inflation would therefore be the second major step in addressing the root causes of the current strikes.
Galloping inflation globally is being driven by dramatic rises in the price of gas and other forms of fossil fuels. There has been a massive increase in global demand over the last couple of years as economies have opened up after Covid-19. On top of that, the war in Ukraine has driven energy prices even higher. Rapidly rising energy prices make it more expensive to produce and transport food and goods, to drive our cars, and to use heat and electricity in our homes, driving up prices everywhere.
Fifty years ago, runaway inflation also drove the infamous financial crisis of the 1970s, when the UK and many other Western countries suffered mass unemployment, strikes, energy shortages and economic misery. Then, as now, inflation was driven by dramatic increases in the price of fossil fuels, when the major Middle Eastern oil exporting countries placed embargos on Western countries which were seen to support Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
Fifty years on, despite the overwhelming evidence that fossil fuels are causing global climate change, resulting in rising sea levels, more extreme storms, changing seasons, failing crops, flooding etc., and despite the progress made through international climate negotiations, the world is still overwhelmingly dependent on fossil fuels. We are all paying the price in the destruction of our natural environment and the economic impacts of fossil fuel driven inflation on everyone’s standard of living.
The UK, and the whole world, needs to rapidly shift away from our dependence on polluting fossil fuels, and onto clean renewable energy like solar, wind or tidal energy, which does not cause climate change, creates jobs and is massively cheaper than fossil fuels. Scientists, activists, churches, business leaders and economists have been calling for this for decades. If governments had taken faster action years ago, we would not now be facing ecological crisis or the grim economic consequences of fossil fuel driven inflation.
Shifting as rapidly as possible to 100% clean renewable energy, is another of the four shifts Arise is advocating for as part of the 4 Shifts Campaign. The campaign calls for a rewiring of our global economy to be green and fair, so it still creates jobs and lifts people out of poverty, but does so without wrecking the planet.
Conclusion
The widespread strikes we are currently witnessing are an important signal that something is badly wrong in our economy and society. Rather than condemn strikers, governments around the world need to heed these warning signs; recognise the crucial role strikes and trade unions have played in reducing poverty and inequality for over a hundred years; and engage and negotiate fair compromises with workers. They also need to take action to fix the root causes of drastically underfunded public services and galloping global inflation. This means providing significant additional investment in public services, paid for through progressive taxation focused as much as possible on wealth not income. It also means rapidly shifting to 100% clean renewable energy, and ending our global dependency on the expensive polluting fossil fuels that are driving inflation. There is a clear way forward. But are governments ready to take it?
Find out more
Find out more about why the world needs 4 Shifts to transition to a green and fair global economy in Arise’s 4 Shifts Report, and how this forms part of God’s bigger vision for our world in the Arise Manifesto.
Found this blog online, or sent it by a friend? Sign up to receive weekly blogs from Arise directly.