BRITAIN: Peace at a Price

Truckers settle, but other strikes get worse

Black plastic bags of garbage piled up in minimountains on the sidewalks of London last week. Birmingham's major hospitals sent most of their patients home, reserving treatment only for emergency cases and the critically ill. In Liverpool, authorities were debating whether it would be necessary to bury bodies at sea, since local gravediggers refused to work.

Seeking wage hikes of 40%, thousands of garbage men, hospital workers, gravediggers and schoolteachers were staging wildcat walkouts, even though Britain otherwise was supposed to be enjoying a week of...

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