DOCTORS in England on Thursday (13) staged the biggest walkout in the history of the UK's state-funded National Health Service, prompting fears for patient safety. The unprecedented five-day stoppage over pay and staff retention is the latest in eight months of industrial action across the NHS, which is already reeling from a vast pandemic backlog.
That sounds a lot like the Japanese transit protests. The lines still ran as normal but they refused to collect payment. Nobody impacted but the transit lines.
That’s a good system. It puts the consequences squarely where they belong, and only where they belong.
Most such tactics are explicitly illegal in the UK, unfortunately. Basically, the legal framework for labour strikes in the UK is set up to maximise inconvenience to the public and minimise the tools (and effectiveness of those tools) available to the workers and their unions.
That sounds a lot like the Japanese transit protests. The lines still ran as normal but they refused to collect payment. Nobody impacted but the transit lines.
That’s a good system. It puts the consequences squarely where they belong, and only where they belong.
Most such tactics are explicitly illegal in the UK, unfortunately. Basically, the legal framework for labour strikes in the UK is set up to maximise inconvenience to the public and minimise the tools (and effectiveness of those tools) available to the workers and their unions.
That’s not by accident either.