The number of working days lost to strike action under Labour has surged past one million despite handing bumper pay hikes to its union ‘paymasters’, it emerged yesterday.
Analysis of official figures shows that between July 2024, when Labour won the general election, and January this year, 1.04million working days were wiped out because of strikes.
But tens of thousands more are expected to be lost after rail union barons called more strikes and after resident doctors last month voted in favour of another six months of crippling walkouts, with talks between the militant BMA health union and the government having completely broken down.
It comes despite resident doctors having been handed a 22 per cent hike less than two years ago. They are demanding a further rise of 29 per cent.
Labour has handed inflation-busting pay awards to several unions since winning the 2024 general election, with train drivers also handed 15 per cent.
But the analysis of Office for National Statistics data suggests it has failed to tame them.
The figures include walkouts by thousands of London Underground staff in September last year, which brought the capital to a grinding halt for a week. Fresh strikes have been announced by the militant RMT rail union for next month. It is demanding that Tube drivers’ daily working hours are cut by half an hour.
The highest number of working days lost in any month since Keir Starmer entered Downing Street was in November last year (143,000), when resident doctors walked out for five days in their bitter dispute over pay.
Resident doctors have been striking over pay despite getting a 22 per cent rise less than two years ago. Pictured: Resident doctors outside St Thomas’ Hospital, London in July 2025
Birmingham bins strikes have been causing piles of ribbish to build up on the streets since last January
Labour has handed inflation-busting pay awards to several unions since winning the 2024 general election, with train drivers also handed 15 per cent.
This was followed by 119,000 in December, when they went on strike again in the run-up to Christmas, sparking accusations by Health Secretary Wes Streeting they were acting ‘recklessly’ for walking out amid the NHS’s annual winter crisis.
Strikes by bin collection workers in Birmingham, which started last January, have added to the overall tally.
Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said: ‘This Labour government is in hoc to the unions. They’re their paymasters.
‘The extent to which they are is truly terrifying. But this should not surprise anyone.
‘They’re soft when it comes to the unions and always cave into them, and that’s payback for all the donations they’ve given Labour over the years. No wonder they’re running riot.’
Last month the Mail revealed how nearly 15,000 public sector staff were given paid leave to moonlight as trade unionists and help plot strikes last year – including 3,000 NHS workers.
Around £90million of taxpayers’ cash was spent by councils, schools, Whitehall departments and the health service last year to cover the cost of staff engaging in trade union work.
Of more than 20,000 union representatives embedded in public bodies, 14,976 (74 per cent) enjoyed paid leave to work on union activities.
Staggeringly, 2,258 of them spent more than half their working hours on union business rather than delivering public services – with nearly 1,000 devoting their entire time to working for union causes. This included handing out leaflets and plotting industrial action.
It means taxpayers have helped fund strike plots that have crippled their public services, including resident doctors’ walkouts, HM Revenue and Customs strikes and industrial action by bin collectors.
The arrangement, known as ‘facility time’, gives public sector workers the right to be paid their wages while carrying out trade union activity.
Dr Emma Runswick, the BMA deputy chairman of council, said the government would only end the dispute by putting ‘an offer on the table that restores the pay to where it needs to be, gives the much-needed increase in jobs and helps bring down patient waiting lists’.
They are striking over the number of jobs and training contracts available to them, their working conditions and their pay, as they lobby for a 29 per cent pay increase.
A Government spokesman said: ‘We are investing record levels into our NHS to cut waiting lists and get patients seen on time, with more doctors and nurses on the front line.’