When writing this post, I quickly checked the Slugger archives to see if I had used the headline ‘Now is the winter of our discontent’ before. And true enough, I did this time last year. Last year’s post was about strikes, and not much has changed.
This time, it is the turn of transport workers who plan more strikes on Friday, December 15 and continue on Saturday, December 16.
Another 24-hour strike will take place on Friday, December 22, with all three strikes — on some of the busiest shopping days of the year — bringing to a standstill all bus and rail services operated by Translink.
Ulster University senior economist Dr Esmond Birnie said the economic value lost as a result of the strikes would be wide-ranging.
He said striking staff would lose income, but that the dominance of working from home meant it would have less of an impact on office workers’ output.
But there would be a particular cost to the retail sector as it lost shoppers in the key weeks before Christmas, while there would be fewer people buying meals and drinks in restaurants, cafés, pubs and hotels.
Dr Birnie estimated the daily loss of gross value added (GVA) to retail and hospitality in Belfast at £2.7m.
“So, the four days of transport strikes has an impact on the size of the Belfast economy of at least £10m,” he added.
I do always get suspicious when economists come up with these conveniently round numbers but whatever the amount it will be a kick in the nuts for our town centres. I myself had planned to a Christmas do for Saturday the 16th. I barely drink these days so it’s no hassle for me to bring the car but I imagine pubs will lose a lot of trade those nights.
I don’t blame the transport workers; they are entitled to a fair wage. Let’s face it: the whole point of a strike is to cause maximal hassle. There is no point in striking for two hours on a Tuesday afternoon. The problem of course is the cupboard is bare with many public services. The Tories don’t give a monkies about public services generally but they have zero regard for Northern Ireland as well. There are no votes here for them and we are a pain in the hole generally so they try their best to ignore us and usually succeed.
Interestingly, I had to drive my nephew to school on the strike day last Friday. I expected the traffic to be insane, but it was actually surprisingly quiet on the roads. I think a lot of people just decided to work from home or stay of school.
The nephew did not even look up from his iPhone when I told him I used to walk the 2.5 miles to school. Young un’s today…
I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism, I am not a member of any political party. Oddly for a member of the Slugger team, I am not that interested in daily politics, preferring to write about big ideas in society. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.
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