Why changes to how we work mean the 'bad old days' of strikes may be gone 

Although last year’s number was almost twice the 169,600 days lost during 2015, when the 129,000 days lost because of junior doctors’ strikes are stripped out, the level has been falling since the mid-1980s. 

The number of strikes is also easing, trending down from 216 in 1997, to 101 last year.

The ONS described the decline as “significant”, adding that “though volatile, the number of working days lost has remained broadly the same over this period”.

However, ONS analysis of the data reveals that instead of a large number of small scale strikes, “large-scale stoppages have become more common”.

Looking back over the past decade, pay is most often the main source of industrial action. In seven of the past 10 years, it has been the most common reason for workers to down tools, overtaken only twice during the period.

These instances took place in 2009 and 2010, when Britain was reeling from the impact of financial crisis and redundancy was the most common cause.

However, Ben Willmott, director of public policy at CIPD, the professional body for HR and people management, said that the financial crisis could have laid the ground for a long-term decline in willingness among staff to walk out over pay.

“Events from 2007 together with wider economic uncertainty could mean staff feel they have less bargaining power and simply put up with what they see as poor pay,” he said.

The only other time that wages have not been the major factor behind strikes was in 2016, when “other causes” - such as working hours - featured most prominently. Again, the ONS attributed this to junior doctors’ grievances over changes to their contracts.

The Trades Union Congress welcomed the decline in the level of industrial action but warned that as staff face increasing pressure on household spending with inflation overtaking pay increases, wages need to keep up with the rising cost of living.  

“Strikes are far less common these days and tend to be short, with going on strike always a last resort when bosses refuse to negotiate or compromise,” said Frances O’Grady, TUC general-secretary.

“With the average annual wage still worth £1,000 less than a decade ago, it is not surprising that many strikes are about fair pay. To keep strikes at historic lows, the next government needs to get wages rising.”

Union Unite echoed the view that to get to a stage where staff walk out, it effectively means that there has been a breakdown in communications, and also that pay remains the most common cause of industrial action.

“We invest the majority of our energies into solving disputes before there are strikes and 95pc of the time we succeed,” said Len McCluskey, general-secretary of Unite. “However, as pay depression has continued, workers are understandably getting fed up, in both the public and the private sector, and want to be heard.”

He also hit out at the watering down of unions’ powers, calling such moves an “insult to this nation’s traditions of justice and fairness”.

While the Conservative manifesto has backed the idea of strengthening employees’ powers within businesses through placing shopfloor representatives in the boardrooms of listed companies and pledged to consult on how to improve corporate governance in private businesses, the government’s record came under withering attack from Unite.

“Conservatives have done their utmost to portray trade unions and their members as ‘the enemy within’, introducing regressive anti-worker laws to stop people defending themselves,” said Mr McCluskey. “That is not progress; it’s giving bad bosses a free ride.”

While unions hit out at legislative changes as being behind the decline in strikes, others pointed to the changes in society and the reshaped UK economy as factors which were at least as important - if not more so. 

“The decline in unionisation is no doubt a big factor,” said John Philpott, Director of The Jobs Economist. “But changes to the economy have got to be considered too. Heavy industry, which was heavily unionised, has virtually disappeared with the switch into services.

“Many services companies are smaller businesses where employee relations tend to be informal and staff are more amenable to the company’s aim,” said Mr Philpott, adding that smaller businesses are more likely to strike individual pay deals than wider settlements.

Rather than huge workplaces, modern business can also tend to be more dispersed - such as a large retailer with lots of outlets each employing only a handful of staff - making it less likely for issues to spread to large portions of the workforce, taking it to a point where there is anger on such a scale to drive a ballot for industrial action.

Services jobs can also be seen as more transitory, with a threat that there is a ready supply of people lining up to take positions and other jobs are available, meaning staff would rather put up with a difficult situation or simply go find a better job than go to the trouble of striking.

“Grievances are also going underground,” said Mr Philpott. “Rather than strike, workers just disengage, doing their job but without any motivation apart from getting paid.”

How the gig economy - companies such as Uber and Deliveroo which class people working for them as self-employed contractors rather than staff - fits into the picture is unclear.

The ONS data does not include them, but with high profile legal battles going on about such gig workers’ employment status and some cases of them staging unofficial strikes, there could be a higher level of industrial action taking place than official figures record.

Whatever the reasons, it seems from statistical analysis, we are unlikely to see a sudden surge in workers picking up placards and standing around blazing braziers as was a frequent sight in the 1970s and 1980s.

“Looking at the numbers we’ve seen a downward trend for decades and days lost seems to have plateaued at about 300,000,” said CIPD’s Mr Willmott, though he cautioned that “blips” have pushed the numbers up every few years.

“It’s not like the ‘bad old days’ - it’s a different type of workplace now and employers are really thinking about employee engagement," he said. “Unions still have a valuable job to do improving the quality of the workplace but we’ve seen a steady reduction in their membership for decades."