Catherwood LibraryILR School

With further fire service strikes almost a certainty in the ongoing disputes between the government and the Fire Brigades Union (see WIT's for Jan. 13 and 30, 2003), Britain may be headed for further public services strikes as tensions mount between the Aslef train drivers union and privatized rail lines. With Aslef insisting that employers agree by May to the principle of eliminating the current wide discrepancies in the pay of train drivers on different lines, and the employers' Strategic Rail Authority making clear its opposition to national pay parity, the first rail strike since the mid-1990's privatization of Britain's rail services is a distinct possibility. The conflict is part of the British labor movement's overall opposition to the tendency towards "two-tier" workforces in which new hires in public services privatized under Prime Minister Tony Blair's Private Finance Initiative (PFI) are receiving lower wages and benefits than workers originally hired by the government (see WIT for Jan. 14, 2003).