Wage rows cause 91 per cent of working days lost to walkouts
Pay is again the top reason for industrial disputes, leapfrogging redundancy rows as the main cause of walkouts, according to new Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures.
In 2011 and 2012 combined, 91 per cent of lost working days were due to disputes where pay was cited as the main driver. This includes stoppages over feared or alleged reductions in earnings as well as rows over the size of pay increases and pension provisions.
The ONS figures show a dramatic change from figures for 2009 and 2010 when only 24 per cent of working days lost were prompted by disagreements over pay, while disputes over redundancy caused 72 per cent of working days to be lost.
This shift in emphasis marks a return to the pattern of previous years, where pay had been the main reason for days lost to walk outs.
Historic ONS data shows that from 2003 to 2008 disputes over pay accounted for 79 per cent of days lost, while working conditions and other causes of dispute were relatively unimportant, similarly in 2011 and 2012 combined working conditions accounted for only 3 per cent of days lost.
“In 2012 [alone], 67 per cent of working days lost were due to disputes over pay, accounting for 46 per cent of all stoppages,” the ONS said in its labour disputes annual report.
“The biggest contributors to this were public administration and defence and education. Although the number of working days lost within public administration and defence came from a small number of large strikes over pay, the majority of strikes in this sector were over redundancies.”
ONS figures show that 248,800 working days were lost to labour disputes and three quarters of these were due to stoppages that lasted a single day.