More strikes are coming, with 100,000 civil servants due to strike on 1 February. For 18 days across February and March, 150 UK universities will be shut down by University and College Union action. Last week, 45,000 junior doctors began voting on strike action. They will join transport workers, nurses, ambulance workers and a number of other public and private professionals – an objection of strikers, to suggest a collective noun.
Their caricatures have already been vividly painted – the “fat cat” trade union leaders, the entitled workers, the uncaring healthcare professionals who are taking advantage of bad times to snatch a higher paycheck; all at the expense of small businesses and poorly patients. These are compelling portrayals. Life is already hard, and those making it immediately and practically harder are easier to blame than those making it abstractly so. A paramedic who refuses to get in their ambulance is a more visible villain than a blur of ministers who have passed policies over the years that have compelled that worker to strike.
