Rail workers across the UK will tomorrow begin their latest round of strikes, adding to a long list of key workers taking part in industrial action over Christmas and into the new year.
This ‘winter of discontent’ will see bus drivers, ambulance staff, postal workers, nurses, civil servants, and teachers walk out of their workplaces to demand better working conditions and pay increases to keep up with the rising cost of living.
But as news coverage focuses on major public services, a smaller regional dispute over wages, staffing levels and unpaid expenses in a corner of north-west London is shining a light on a crisis within a crisis: how some of the professionals dealing with the human impact of the cost of living, particularly in the voluntary sector, are themselves being squeezed by those same costs.
