Fears of a Christmas of chaos were tonight looming ever larger, with votes by ambulance workers, railway staff and Eurostar security officers to strike over pay and conditions.
The ballot results came as Royal Mail workers, university lecturers and sixth form college staff took to picket lines at scores of locations across the UK in one of the biggest days of industrial action of recent years.
As deliveries of letters and parcels were halted and delayed, Royal Mail chief executive Simon Thompson accused the Communication Workers Union of doing “everything they can to destroy Christmas”. But the CWU’s general secretary Dave Ward retorted that bosses were “risking a Christmas meltdown because of their stubborn refusal to treat their employees with respect”.
Already nurses, civil servants and bus drivers have voted to take part in walkouts expected to involve hundreds of thousands of workers over the coming months.
And ballots are planned on industrial action by other groups, including junior doctors and firefighters.
More than 10,000 ambulance workers – including paramedics, emergency care assistants and call handlers today voted to strike across nine trusts in England and Wales over a 4 per cent offer described by the GMB union as “a massive real-terms pay cut”.
“Ambulance workers – like other NHS workers – are on their knees,” said the GMB national secretary Rachel Harrison.
“This is as much about unsafe staffing levels and patient safety as it is about pay. A third of GMB ambulance workers think delays they’ve been involved with have led to the death of a patient.
“Something has to change or the service as we know it will collapse.”
The news followed a vote on Tuesday for industrial action by thousands of 999 call handlers, ambulance technicians and paramedics belonging to Unison.
And as many as 300,000 nurses are expected to join unprecedented walkouts approved in the first such ballot in the 106-year history of the Royal College of Nursing.
Meanwhile, the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association (TSSA) announced action at Network Rail and 12 train operators, coinciding with walkouts by RMT rail workers.
TSSA walkouts will take place at Avanti West Coast on 13, 14, 16 and 17 December, and at c2c in Essex on 17 December, while action short of a strike will run from 13 December, with members refusing to fill in for RMT colleagues missing due to disputes.
In a separate dispute, more than 100 security staff on the Eurostar Channel Tunnel service are to strike for four days in the run-up to Christmas, after voting 4-1 in favour of industrial action.
Downing Street resisted calls for ministers to get involved in talks to resolve arguments over pay and working conditions.
The prime minister Rishi Sunak’s official spokesperson said it was for employers and unions to discuss a way forward.
And he said that the transport secretary Mark Harper – who met metro mayors from the North of England to discuss disruption to train services – was playing no more than a “facilitating role” in talks on the rail dispute.
The interim chief executive of NHS Providers, Saffron Cordery, said that trusts were taking action to ensure lives are not put at risk by what they fear could be “coordinated and prolonged industrial action in the coming months”.
But she said walkouts by ambulance workers would make response times “incredibly stretched” and played down the scale of assistance which the Army might be able to provide if called in to help.
“We will really welcome their support but that won’t play a central role in keeping the ambulance service going,” said Ms Cordery.
Health secretary Steve Barclay said that demands for 19 per cent pay increases for nurses were “not affordable”.
“Each additional 1 per cent pay rise for all staff on the Agenda for Change contract would cost around £700 million a year,” he said.
But he added: “My door remains open to discuss with the unions ways we can make the NHS a better place to work.”
