Public transport strikes in London and France this week told everyone what they already knew but many had yet to feel: austerity will hurt. At the sharp end of public sector cost-cutting are the people who drive trains, collect rubbish and bury the dead. Their resistance could bring the new “age of austerity” to a grinding halt.
To do so workers would need to win a game of chicken with their state employers. The unions have good reasons not to swerve first. They are still doing relatively well – in the UK, the mean hourly wage for a public sector worker rose 6 per cent last year, three times more than the private sector equivalent. Also, in both France and the UK the union movement is defending one of its last strongholds.
On the other side, government employers have good reason to yield. Countries can’t function for long without the people who run schools, hospitals and trains. In South Africa, the government – which is politically close to the unions – has given in. It offered public sector workers an unaffordable 7.5 per cent pay rise to end three weeks of crippling strikes.