In the pantheon of powerful trades unions, French air traffic controllers rank above all: a few hundred people can wreck the journeys of millions of travellers by walking out. The UK has no unions with a match for such might. But as the two-year pay dispute between the Aslef train drivers’ union and government-directed rail firms showed, a relatively small number of workers can bring much of the railway to a halt.
“There’s a perception that we’re always on strike, but that’s far from the truth,” says Dave Calfe, who took over as Aslef general secretary this year.
