“I had to go to a food bank last week, which I’ve never had to do in my life,” said Lisa, a cleaner at the Harbour, an NHS hospital in Blackpool. Despite working five days a week, including weekends, finding the money to cope with rising prices is proving increasingly difficult.
She and about 50 colleagues employed by OCS, a private outsourcing company that employs 68,000 people, started a strike on Wednesday morning to ask for improved conditions. They are a small part of a series of industrial actions as workers respond to price rises after more than a decade of stagnating real pay.
