Britain is witnessing one of the biggest strikes by public sector employees in three years with up to one million people expected to take to the streets to protest pay freeze and pension changes as part of austerity measures, media reports said on Thursday.
Union leaders said more than 50 marches and rallies were organised across England and Wales Thursday, the Guardian reported. Health workers and civil servants are joining teachers in the mass demonstration against the austerity measures in an unprecedented way.
Dave Prentis, General Secretary of Unison, representing many of the country’s lowest paid workers, told the BBC: “Something has got to give — enough is enough.
“We’ve got 300,000 now on zero-hour contracts, we’ve got a million workers in local Government earning below the living wage that (Conservative Party leader) Boris Johnson and others talk about, and people are saying: ‘We cannot go through another three years of this pay restraint’.”