How important and how wide scale was yesterday’s public sector strike? It is hard to tell from listening to politicians and the unions, who each spun a very different narrative about what the TUC claimed was the biggest show of industrial discontent in 30 years. David Cameron dismissed the action as a “damp squib”, telling MPs that Britain was hardly disrupted at all, with key services like airports running smoothly. On the other side of it, the TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, hailed “huge turnouts”. Here is a summary of the numbers.
General turnout
The unions claim that around 2 million people were on strike yesterday, but ministers dispute this, putting the number closer to 1.2 million.
Education
The biggest impact was undoubtedly on schools. Cameron erroneously claimed yesterday that 40 per cent of schools were open (which he was quickly called up on), but in fact, 68 per cent of UK state schools shut entirely, and 14 per cent partially closed. In England, 62 per cent were shut, while the figure in Scotland was as high at 99 per cent.
Health
There has been some serious disagreement flying around on turnout from staff in hospitals, ambulance services and NHS Direct in England. The Department of Health claimed that only 79,000 employees didn’t turn up for work. This would constitute 14.5 per cent of the workforce, les than the 20 per cent turnout predicted by the NHS. However, unions accused them of “fiddling the figures”, claiming that 400,000 NHS staff went on strike, a number that would have been higher had some staff not gone to work to ensure care for emergency patients.
What we are certain of, is that 6950 operations were cancelled (that’s 23 per cent of a total of 30,000 non-urgent NHS operations). 54,000 appointments were cancelled. Ambulance services were affected in several areas of the country, particularly the south-east, with 42 per cent of the London Ambulance Service striking.
Civil service/local government
Some 146,000 civil servants took part in the strike, representing more than a quarter of the civil service. According to the BBC, 850,500 council workers were on strike across the UK. The Local Government Association said that 670,000 employees in England and Wales were not at work, equating to 32 per cent.
Content from our partners
Related
