UK Border Force to strike for eight days over Christmas

UK Border Force officers are to stage an eight-day strike over the Christmas period, affecting Birmingham, Gatwick, Cardiff, Glasgow, London Heathrow (Terminals 2-5) and Manchester airports.

The strike – which will include around 15,000 civil servants in all – is set to take place between December 23 and 26 and then again between December 28 and 31, the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union has confirmed.

Newhaven Port will also be impacted.

Union members voted in favour of the strike as the result of a dispute over pay, pensions and redundancies, and PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka has said that the action will have a “major effect” on people travelling over the period.

“This is a crisis. We have tried for months to negotiate, but we’ve been ignored," he said at a press conference in London. "No money has been made available or put on the table."

Border Force officers check travellers’ passports as they arrive in the UK, so the strike will affect passengers coming from France and other countries.

The ISU union, which also represents civil servants, previously held a vote over the potential for Christmas strike action in November, but it did not achieve the turnout needed to carry the action forward.

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