It may be a case of driving home for Christmas for more Brits than ever before this year, as strike action on the transport network looks set to take place over the festive period.
This week, workers at Border Force became the latest set of trade union members to announce walk-outs in December. They joined a growing list of staff preparing to take strike action in some of the country’s most vital sectors, including the NHS, the postal service, education and the rail industry.
But it’s not just in the UK that workers are uniting. In Greece, thousands of workers participated in a 24-hour general strike that saw the cities of Athens and Thessaloniki almost brought to a standstill, while workers in Belgium also held a general strike last month. The root cause appears to be spiralling levels of inflation and the cost-of-living crisis but the response from governments differs from country to country. The UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said he’s working on “new tough laws” to curb strike action but many are questioning whether the government has a mandate for such an act.
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Meanwhile, in news of collective action of a different kind this week, social media users on Tumblr have banded together to create a Martin Scorsese film called Goncharov. Posters, soundtracks, drawings and fan fiction have been shared in relation to the 1973 film which stars Robert De Niro – but the catch is that the movie never existed. Find out more on this week’s episode of The Week Unwrapped podcast.
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