{"title":"The Sea Change in UK Strike Statistics, Implications for Public Policy, and Misrepresentation of the 2022–2023 Strike Surge","authors":"Dave Lyddon","doi":"10.1111/irj.12474","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>The UK state has collected data on strike activity for over a century, to inform public policy on industrial relations. This involved creating and maintaining a consistent and reliable data set, despite inevitable limitations and funding pressures. Yet how the Office for National Statistics now constructs and presents its statistics on strikes, collected through the Labour Disputes Inquiry, has been radically transformed. Two revisions to the definition of a ‘stoppage’, departing from International Labour Organisation resolutions, have broken the consistency of this longstanding series. The most egregious is that a multi-employer strike (such as in health or education), or a multi-union strike, no longer constitutes just one but multiple stoppages (of each employer and of each union), resulting in an ‘explosion’ of recorded stoppage numbers. Weaknesses in data collection and presentation compound these difficulties. Not only are the dimensions of the 2022–2023 strike surge misrepresented, but the historic role of strike statistics in informing public policy is now undermined. Recommendations are made on how to improve the ONS's published strike data.</p>","PeriodicalId":46619,"journal":{"name":"INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL","volume":"56 5","pages":"382-396"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2025-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/irj.12474","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/irj.12474","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS & LABOR","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The UK state has collected data on strike activity for over a century, to inform public policy on industrial relations. This involved creating and maintaining a consistent and reliable data set, despite inevitable limitations and funding pressures. Yet how the Office for National Statistics now constructs and presents its statistics on strikes, collected through the Labour Disputes Inquiry, has been radically transformed. Two revisions to the definition of a ‘stoppage’, departing from International Labour Organisation resolutions, have broken the consistency of this longstanding series. The most egregious is that a multi-employer strike (such as in health or education), or a multi-union strike, no longer constitutes just one but multiple stoppages (of each employer and of each union), resulting in an ‘explosion’ of recorded stoppage numbers. Weaknesses in data collection and presentation compound these difficulties. Not only are the dimensions of the 2022–2023 strike surge misrepresented, but the historic role of strike statistics in informing public policy is now undermined. Recommendations are made on how to improve the ONS's published strike data.
一个多世纪以来,英国政府一直在收集罢工活动的数据,为劳资关系方面的公共政策提供信息。这涉及创建和维护一致和可靠的数据集,尽管不可避免地存在限制和资金压力。然而,英国国家统计局(Office for National Statistics)现在通过劳资纠纷调查(Labour Disputes Inquiry)收集的罢工统计数据,其构建和呈现的方式已经发生了根本性的变化。对“停工”定义的两次修订,偏离了国际劳工组织的决议,打破了这一系列长期存在的一致性。最令人震惊的是,多雇主罢工(如卫生或教育部门)或多工会罢工不再仅仅构成一次罢工,而是构成多次停工(每个雇主和每个工会),导致记录的停工数字“激增”。数据收集和呈现方面的弱点使这些困难更加严重。不仅2022-2023年罢工激增的规模被歪曲了,而且罢工统计数据在为公共政策提供信息方面的历史作用现在也被削弱了。就如何改进国家统计局公布的罢工数据提出了建议。