A hysterical call to industrial warfare meant the Boxing Day stoppages deflated a much-needed retail boost
For all Michael Gove's hysteria about trade unionists itching for a fight, the dispute over public servants' pensions inflicted little real damage in the end. A cash-strapped government reasonably decided it had to do something to curb pension costs, but demanded too much in terms of extra contributions and cuts. By threatening to strike, unions pushed ministers into a rather more reasonable offer. Assuming the details can be sorted, there is now a fighting chance that the syndicalist left and the union-busting right will both be held in check, and that harmony will return. The general sense is of a willingness to compromise winning out.
What a difference with the ludicrous Boxing day bust-up on the capital's tube trains. London's Underground is grappling not with some inescapably thorny problem, such as paying for pensions in an ageing society, but with manning a Christmas rota. Only a minority of drivers would have been required to work yesterday, and yet rather than bribing them to get to it with generous over-time payments management insisted that this would over-reach the small print of some 1992 concordat and thereby set a precedent with unknown but spine-chilling consequences. Declarations of industrial war followed, and so it was that some tube lines came to be disrupted, some partially closed and some entirely suspended.
In more ordinary times this might not have mattered too much, other than to the Wolves and Arsenal fans who saw their Premier League clash postponed. But after a less than merry Christmas, a stricken high street is relying on January sales to rake in the cash as never before. The early online discounting by the likes of John Lewis and M&S just before Christmas was one indicator of a desperate need to shift stock, while the clutch of shops – such as Blacks and La Senza – that are on or just over the brink of administration even before December is done are chilling evidence that thousands of jobs are at stake.
Of course the London strike merely compounded the fact that across much of the country rail services were nowhere to be seen, nor scheduled to be. But with a slump coming on top of a deep and quickening tide of online sales, retailers can no longer afford to wait for trains to get going again. If November's public sector strike is remembered at all it may be in the minds of children recalling an unexpected single day off, long after their parents have forgotten the arrangements they had to make to deal with it. But if yesterday's stoppages deflate the Boxing day boost that London shops were banking on, then some unfortunate staff could be counting the cost for a long time to come.