LONDON (Dispatches) -- Around a quarter of a million passengers arriving at UK airports on Friday were warned to expect delays due to the start of strikes by passport control staff.
Around 1,000 members of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union employed by the Home Office to operate passport booths walked out at Heathrow, Birmingham, Cardiff, Gatwick, Glasgow and Manchester airports, and the port of Newhaven in East Sussex.
The Border Force strikes will take place every day from Friday to the end of the year, except December 27.
Aviation data company Cirium said 1,290 flights were scheduled to land at affected airports on the first day of industrial action, with a total capacity of more than a quarter of a million passengers.
This is the busiest Christmas for airports since 2019, as it is the first festive period without coronavirus travel restrictions since the start of the pandemic.
The Border Force strikes are part of a rolling program of industrial action by members of the PCS union in a long running dispute over pay, jobs, pensions and conditions.
PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka has urged people affected by disruption to vent their anger at the Government.
Talks have been held with ministers, but Serwotka said pay is never discussed.
“The Government could stop these strikes tomorrow if it puts more money on the table,” he said.
“Like so many workers, Border Force employees are struggling with the cost of living crisis. They are desperate.”
Cirium said a total of 8,910 arriving flights with a combined capacity of nearly 1.8 million seats were scheduled at affected airports across all the strike days.
Hundreds of thousands of workers are striking over winter as unions seek pay rises in line with the rate of inflation to help shield their members from the cost of living crisis.
The past year has seen strike action in a range of sectors from dock workers to lawyers as decades-high inflation has eroded earnings.
The government insists it must stick to more modest increases for public sector workers recommended by independent pay review bodies in order to bring inflation under control.
Royal Mail employees were also on strike Friday, their fifth day of action this month, in what Royal Mail said was a “cynical attempt to hold Christmas to ransom”.
The company has estimated that the strike, which will continue on Christmas Eve, has already cost it £100 million.
National Highways workers in London and the South East will continue their four-day walkout that started on Thursday.
The workers, who plan, design, build, operate and maintain the roads, are following action by colleagues in Yorkshire and the Humber, northwest and northeast England.
Thousands of British ambulance workers will stage two further strikes on Jan. 11 and 23 in an escalating dispute over pay and staffing, the Unison trade union said on Thursday, after a similar walkout by staff on Wednesday.
While Wednesday’s strike, which

also involved workers affiliated to two other trade unions, lasted 12 hours, the two Unison strikes next month will last 24 hours each, Unison said in a statement.
The walkouts will involve all ambulance employees as opposed to just emergency response crews, although many will be exempted from strike action under emergency cover plans, said the union, which represents the majority of ambulance workers in Britain.
“It’s only through talks that this dispute will end,” Unison General Secretary Christina McAnea said. “No health workers want to go out on strike again in the new year.”
The strikes come as an already pressured health system faces further strain this winter, with nurses also going on strike in a separate pay dispute.