500,000 Britons went on strike on the 1st of February to demand pay that reflects both the rate of inflation and the true value of their labour, signalling that the country's workforce has reached rock bottom. The living costs issue in the UK has impacted the majority of industries, but for the country's labourers, it is merely the most recent in a long line of issues.

The strikes came about after more than a decade of social service cuts and austerity policies that were primarily hard on the working and middle class, along with significant changes in the UK economy that some analysts claim have accentuated disparity. The UK's rail service was suspended and schools were closed on Wednesday due to the worst strikes in ten years. Over the past ten years, and particularly under the Conservative Party, the UK's public infrastructure, notably the NHS, schools, rail and maritime services, firefighters, and police, have suffered from a lack of government investment. Due to the coronavirus pandemic that started in 2020, and caused an overflow on the NHS's already-stretched system, this lack of funding has been magnified further.

Since the summer of 2022, rail employees have been striking, led by General Secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers Mick Lynch, over what the union claims are a projected salary drop over the next two years as well as anticipated employment and service upgrade cuts. Rishi Sunak's administration has retaliated by chastising the workforce, denouncing the strikes, and supporting legislation about minimum service levels that, if it is approved by Parliament, will restrict employees' ability to strike.

Over the same worries about salary stagnation, the strikes have moved to civil sector employees, including those in His Majesty's Treasury and those who oversee passport and driving test applications. The Financial Times reports that UK inflation surged at 11.1 per cent the previous year and has since been circling around 10 per cent, but public sector employees' salary hasn't kept pace. Civil service employees received raises of only approximately 2 or 3 per cent, whereas projected wage increases for public sector employees averaged approximately 5 per cent.

Recent strikes and the anticipated additional measures show that a settlement between the government and companies is still a long way off. Additionally, they address more serious issues with the economic state of the UK that predate Brexit. However, the strikes aren't limited to just money; they additionally involve political decisions and arrangements with unions while simultaneously addressing some of the issues that have contributed to the present financial and employment situations.

Unquestionably, the present energy constraint precipitated by the conflict between Ukraine and Russia and the inflationary living expenses situation is serious. However, it was not a happenstance; instead, it represents the culmination of an array of political as well as economic choices that have depleted welfare care in addition to relying on them financially and functionally.

Prime minister Liz Truss highlighted certain aspects of the UK’s financial vulnerability in September 2022 when she announced a tax proposal that was swiftly abandoned that would have cut taxes for the richest citizens and given tax advantages to businesses. Since it represented such a drastic divergence from conventional cognizance of economics- namely, that putting funds into the economy via tax incentives only serves to aggravate inflation- that strategy generated havoc in the capital sector. During Truss’s tenure, businesses and foreign governments lost confidence in the UK economy and began to withdraw their investments, which caused the Great British Pound to depreciate against the dollar. Such a depreciation is obviously unacceptable and will be met with swift consequences.