The strike comes with demands of workers for higher pay amid sky-high inflation hitting the country
Uk is looking forward to the consequences of high inflation. Workers at the largest shipping container port, the port of Felix Stowe have called for an eight-day strike.
The demands of workers call for higher pay amid soaring inflation and the cost of living.
Port of Felix Stowe has around 2000 workers who handle about four million containers a year from 2000 accounting for more than half of the country’s incoming shipping freight.
These 2000 workers walked off from their jobs on Sunday. This has resulted in fears of supply chain problems with the transport industry already affected by work stoppages, due to railway workers’ strikes across the UK, resulting in only one in five trains running.
Railway and shipping are not the only sectors that are facing strikes. Later this month postal workers plan to go on a four-day strike.
Furthermore, telecom giant BT faced its first stoppage in decades. Criminal lawyers and amazon warehouse staff are also among those who staged walkouts in the past few weeks.
What lies ahead?
“Strike action will cause huge disruption and will generate massive shockwaves throughout the UK’s supply chain, but this dispute is entire of the company’s own making,” Bobby Morton, the national officer for docks at the Unite union, which represents the striking Felix Stowe workers, told Reuters news agency.
He further adds that the company had its chance to make the right offer but it chose not to do so.
On the contrary, Hutchison holding ltd. Which owns the port of Felixstowe called the walk-off by workers as “disappointing” and that the offer of salary increases of an average of 8 percent was “fair”.
Inflation hit the UK, which is said to be the highest in 40 years, crossing 10 percent amid soaring food and energy prices driven, in part, by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
What comes as a shocker is that the bank of England has forecast that it will top 113 percent this year, tipping the British economy into a lengthy recession.
Reports come from the port of Felixstowe that workers are struggling across the UK owing to the rise in the cost of living in terms of goods inflation.
Shipping group Maersk, one of the world’s largest container shippers has warned that the strike could worsen the already precarious situation by causing operational delays.
This situation poses a standoff between the valid demands of workers and an array of industries, both slipping under inflation.
