Britain facing autumn of discontent

RMT announce a week of strikes on the London Underground in September and NHS staff plan action during health service’s busiest period

21 August 2025 

Daily Telegraph 

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Britain is facing an autumn of discontent with strikes set to disrupt crucial services across the country.

The RMT union announced on Thursday that commuters would endure a week of industrial action on the London Underground at the start of September, just as schools return and passenger numbers are expected to rise.

These strikes look set to be followed by months of walkouts across the public sector.

GPs, junior doctors and nurses may strike during winter, the health service’s busiest time of year, over demands for pay and funding.

Meanwhile, strikes have already hit the residents of Birmingham where bin collectors are poised to continue a five-month walkout until Christmas over pay cuts.

Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, had hoped to keep unions on side by handing out £10bn worth of backdated public sector pay rises after taking office, but these have failed to deter further walkouts, with Britain losing more than 280,000 working days to strikes in the first half of this year alone.

The walkouts threaten to overshadow Sir Keir’s reported plans for a reset next month in order to prove that Britain is not “broken”, while adding further pressure to Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, who is scrambling to plug a black hole in the public finances of up to £50bn.

Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, said on Thursday that ministers had a “responsibility” to stand up to public sector pay demands to help support the Prime Minister and Chancellor.

“You look at the range of pressures we’re facing domestically, internationally, economically, public services, the expectations of the country, the pain that families are feeling in their pockets and I’m always conscious that over and above everyone else, Keir and Rachel are carrying all of those pressures together,” Mr Streeting told the Political Currency podcast.

“And so I think it is our responsibility to say to our own departments, or own audiences, or the people we’re responsible for and the services that we’re responsible for, ‘you need to understand that we can’t do everything for everyone, everywhere, all at once’.”

The Tube strike will take place for a week starting from Sept 5, with backroom staff including signallers, engineers and service control personnel downing tools on different days to bring the capital to a standstill.

While drivers are not joining the action, the walkouts will cause disruption across multiple Underground lines, a Transport for London source confirmed.

The RMT union announced its strike after members rejected a 3.4 per cent pay offer, despite typically demanding increases in line with RPI inflation from February the previous year – which stood at 3.4 per cent.

However, The Telegraph understands that demands over special payments for working on Boxing Day and the shortening of the working week from 35 hours to 34.5 hours were also behind union leaders’ decision to call a strike vote, as well as alleged failures by Tube bosses to enter negotiations.

Simon French, chief economist at investment bank Panmure Gordon, said the walkout could cost as much as £90m per day, while Martin Beck, WPI Strategy’s chief economist, said: “We estimate that it could cost the London economy up to a quarter of a billion pounds in the form of lost revenue to TfL and London businesses, more congestion on the roads and extra travel time for commuters.”

Eddie Dempsey, general secretary of the RMT, insisted his members, who include Tube drivers earning above £70,000 a year, were not after “a king’s ransom” but that “fatigue and extreme shift rotations are serious issues impacting on our members’ health and well-being – all of which have not been adequately addressed for years by [London Underground] management”.

Sir Sadiq Khan, the Labour Mayor of London who is in charge of TfL, condemned the walkouts. “Nobody wants to see strike action or disruption for Londoners,” a spokesman said. “The mayor urges the RMT and TfL to get around the table to resolve this matter and avoid industrial action.”

Series of public sector walkouts

The Tube strikes are set to be the first in a series of walkouts across the public sector this winter.

GPs have threatened a round of winter strikes over funding for their practices, as well as demands to be put in charge of “community hubs” that form part of Mr Streeting’s healthcare reforms.

Junior doctors in NHS hospitals, meanwhile, walked out despite securing a 22 per cent pay deal for the fiscal years 2024 and 2025. They have a mandate to strike again until January.

Nurses may join them on the picket line after “overwhelmingly” rejecting a 3.6 per cent pay offer, while other healthcare workers, ranging from paramedics to cleaners, have all rejected pay offers in recent months.

This raises the spectre of these staff balloting for fresh strikes unless their demands are met. NHS strikes have disrupted 1.5 million appointments and operations since 2022.

The Government has also been warned that rubbish could keep piling up on the streets of Birmingham until December as the Unite union remains in a stand-off with the local council.

Unite, Labour’s biggest financial backer, is threatening to cut its political funding to the party over the dispute. It has also suspended the membership of Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, over her failure to back the strikes and for “bringing the union into disrepute”.

Labour was accused by the Conservatives of pandering to union barons after it began making overtures to the unions almost immediately after the 2024 general election.

Within days of Sir Keir entering 10 Downing Street, the leader of the Aslef train drivers’ union met the new Transport Secretary for talks over pay.

A month later the Government announced 15 per cent pay rises for all railway workers, forming part of the taxpayer-funded £10bn worth of giveaways for public sector staff last year.

Richard Holden MP, the Conservative shadow transport secretary, said: “Labour always put union bosses ahead of working people.

“Rachel Reeves blew £10bn showering union paymasters with inflation-busting pay rises – 15 per cent for train drivers, 22 per cent for junior doctors – and the unions have smelt weakness ever since.”

The public sector pay bill is now estimated to be growing by as much as £6.9bn next year, a full £3bn more than economists had expected.

Significantly increase taxes

As a result of this public spending splurge, Ms Reeves is now planning to significantly increase taxes by targeting the middle class.

Economists have already warned that the £9.9bn of fiscal headroom that the Chancellor left herself in the Spring Statement has been wiped out by rising borrowing costs and expectations of higher-for-longer interest rates, leaving her with £50bn to find in this year’s Budget.

Richard Tice, the deputy leader of Reform UK, said: “Labour are being taken for a one way ride by transport unions despite having already been rewarded with substantial pay increases.

“If they continue to cave in, then it will unleash a vicious circle of public sector pay increases.”

Meanwhile, Ms Rayner was criticised for her workers’ rights bill which will repeal Tory laws that prevented public sector strikers from paralysing the economy.

Andrew Griffith, the Conservative shadow business secretary, said: “Under Angela Rayner’s reign we are set for an autumn and then a winter of discontent.

“We will be grappling with a growing number of strikes even before Labour’s disastrous Employment Rights Bill next reaches Parliament.”

The Employment Rights Bill will repeal the Minimum Service Levels Act, which mandated that trade unions give at least 14 days’ notice of strike dates and, for the railways, staff must be found for 40 per cent of timetabled trains to run.

It will also impose heavier burdens on business, including giving newly hired workers the right to take companies to court over unfair dismissal claims from “day one” of their employment.

Sir Keir is said to be planning a reset this autumn in an attempt to challenge claims from Reform that Britain is “broken” under his leadership.

Downing Street officials are said to be working up a strategy to counter Nigel Farage’s claims that Britain has become a “broken” country, which according to the Huffington Post will include defending last year’s tax rises which helped cut NHS waiting lists.

A Transport for London spokesman said: “We regularly meet with our trade unions to discuss any concerns that they may have, and we recently met with the RMT to discuss some specific points.

“We are committed to ensuring our colleagues are treated fairly and, as well as offering a 3.4 per cent pay increase in our ongoing pay discussions, we have made progress on a number of commitments we have made previously.”