Brit Municipal Strike Prompts Shutdowns

Schools in Britain shut down on Wednesday as thousands of local government workers struck over pay in a dispute reminiscent of those that brought down the last Labor government over 20 years ago.

Pupils at state schools enjoyed an extra holiday in the welcome summer sun as support staff stayed away, rubbish lay uncollected and even public toilets did not open. The 24-hour strike over pay in England, Wales and Northern Ireland also affected social workers, people who provide meals to the elderly, white collar-collar employees such as office managers and architects of public housing and public works projects.

Adding to the headache, commuters in London faced chaos later Wednesday as underground train drivers were due to strike over safety provisions.

Prime Minister Tony Blair's government has condemned the council strikers for being greedy, but has in turn been accused of ignoring the plight of thousands of low paid workers.

"I feel very betrayed by the Labor government. Our teaching support staff are in dire straits," local Unison union leader Jane Doolan told Reuters on a picket line outside the town hall in the north London area of Islington.

"People are being paid so little they can barely afford to eat. Something is going to give somewhere," she added.

Anne Mitchell, national spokeswoman for Unison, the largest of the three local government unions, said there had never before been a local government strike of this size in Britain.

"We estimate that 70 percent of schools are closed nationwide. There is no doubt that if we don't get a better pay offer we are looking at more days of action," she told Reuters.

The strikes do not involve teachers, but do include their classroom assistants as well as catering staff and cleaners.

The unions want a 6 percent raise, have rejected the government's 3 percent offer and threatened further strikes. The municipalities that employ them have said they cannot afford such an increase, and the central government has shown no sign of intervening.

"There have not been proper negotiations since the beginning of the year," John Edmonds, an official with the GMB general workers' union, told British Broadcasting Corp. radio. "There's a very big problem of low pay in local government."

But Sir Jeremy Beecham, head of the Local Government Association, said the 3 percent offer was fair and that many union members had voted against the strike.

The strike was approved by 56 percent of members of the Unison union, while GMB members voted 66 percent in favor, and members of the Transport and General Workers' Union voted 80 percent in favor of a strike.

Picket lines were set up outside council offices and buildings in some towns and cities, while union rallies were held in others.

"The issues in the dispute are not just about pay, it's about respect and it's about dignity in the workplace," said Bill Morris, general secretary of the Transport and General Workers'Union.

A second strike is already planned for early August, in what is likely to be an extended series as the unions clash with a ruling Labor party that was traditionally in their camp.

Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) Gordon Brown, setting out the government's spending plans on Monday, issued a rebuke to unions pressing big pay demands.

"Just as sustained economic growth demands responsibility in setting private sector pay, so too a sustained commitment to better public services demands responsibility in setting public sector pay," he told parliament.

Blair, who reinvented the Labor Party to make it more appealing to business and traditionally conservative middle class England, has by turns either attacked militant elements in the unions as "wreckers" or tried to win them over.

Illustrating the depth of the divide between government and the unions, the GMB union launched a poster campaign on Wednesday with the slogan "Labor Isn't Listening."

But local government employers hit back with their own advertisements in national newspapers claiming the strike was undemocratic and that the six percent pay demand would mean local taxes would have to rise.

Britain's last national public sector strike was in 1978-79, during what became known as the "Winter of Discontent."

That unrest, which saw uncollected garbage pile up in the streets and corpses go unburied, helped topple the Labor Party government of James Callaghan and elect Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in May 1979.