The Office for National Statistics Labour Disputes Annual Article, 2014, shows the number of working days lost due to labour disputes in 2014 was 788,000 compared with 444,000 in 2013. The 2014 figure is more than the average in both the 2000s and the 1990s, but less than the 1980s when strike action was more common. The increase in working days lost in 2014 was mainly attributable to a number of large scale public sector strikes. Pay was once again the principal cause of labour disputes. This has been the main cause of labour disputes for the last 10 years, with the exception of 2009 and 2010, when the main cause was redundancy. The private sector has had more strikes than the public sector in the last 3 years, a change to recent history. However, the public sector has had significantly more working days lost than the private sector in each of these years.

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