LONDON (Reuters/AFP) -- British lawyers involved in criminal trials have voted to begin striking indefinitely from next month, the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) said on Monday, threatening further disruption to court cases in a dispute over government funding.
Barristers in England and Wales have been taking intermittent action for months, refusing to take on new cases or cover cases for colleagues which have overrun. The CBA said 80% of voting members had now backed escalating the action.
They will now walk out indefinitely from Sept. 5, the day Boris Johnson’s successor as new prime minister is due to be announced.
Lawyers who act in criminal court cases say real earnings have collapsed, dropping 28% since 2006, with junior barristers earning a median income of only 12,200 pounds ($14,412) in their first three years, forcing many to give up their career.
The strike is the latest in a wave of labor disputes in Britain, where rail, port and airline workers have staged walkouts as pay rises fail to keep up with soaring inflation that is projected to exceed 13% this year.
On Monday, a trade union warned of more strikes at the UK’s largest container port if pay demands are not met, threatening to cause further disruptions to the supply chain.
Workers at Felixstowe port in southeastern England began an eight-day strike over pay on Sunday, in the latest industrial action as decades-high inflation intensifies the country’s cost-of-living crisis.
They say the pay offer they received does not keep up with inflation -- which has surged above 10 percent -- and includes a one-off lump sum payment.
“If we don’t achieve what we’re trying to achieve, there will be more strikes,” Robert Morton, national officer for the Unite union, told Sky News. “We’ve been asking for a minimum of the rate of inflation,” Morton said.
Nearly 2,000 unionized employees at the port in eastern England, including crane drivers, machine operators and stevedores, are involved in the first strike at Felixstowe since 1989.
It comes amid stoppages over pay and working conditions across various UK industries, with railway workers just the latest to strike on Thursday and Saturday this week.
The strike comes after Covid and post-Brexit labor shortages have already hit the UK supply chain.
Morton said he accepted that further strikes at Felixstowe would mean “the supply chain will be severely disrupted”, while saying the strike will end as soon as the port agrees to meet for negotiations.