Up to half a million British workers, including teachers, university staff, civil servants, border officials and train and bus drivers, walked out of their jobs in the largest coordinated industrial action the United Kingdom has seen in more than a decade, as unions step up pressure on the government to demand better pay amid a cost-of-living crisis.

The mass walkouts across the country shut schools, halted most rail services, and forced the military to be put on standby to help with border checks on a day dubbed "Walk Out Wednesday" by unions.

Britons have endured months of disruptions to their daily lives as a bitter dispute over pay and work conditions drags on between unions and the government. But Wednesday's strikes mark an escalation of disruptive action across multiple key industries.

According to unions, as many as 300,000 teachers were expected to be on strike, the biggest group involved, as part of wider action by 500,000 people. The last time the country saw mass walkouts on this scale was in 2011, when well over 1 million public sector workers staged a one-day strike in a dispute over pensions.

Union bosses say that despite some pay rises – such as a 5% offer the government proposed to teachers – scores of public sector workers have been plunged into financial difficulty because their wages failed to keep pace with soaring inflation, meaning they have effectively been taking a pay cut.

'Need money now'

The Trades Union Congress, or TUC, said Wednesday the average public sector worker is 203 pounds ($250) a month worse off compared with 2010, once inflation has been taken into account.

Inflation in the U.K. stands at 10.5%, the highest in 40 years, driven by skyrocketing food and energy costs. While some expect price rises to slow down this year, Britain's economic outlook remains grim. On Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that Britain will be the only major economy to contract this year, performing worse even than sanction-hit Russia.

The Trades Union Congress, a federation of unions, estimated that up to half a million workers, including teachers, university staff, civil servants, border officials and train and bus drivers, would walk out of their jobs across the country.

The PCS Union, representing about 100,000 striking civil servants from more than 120 government departments, warned Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's government that further coordinated action was inevitable.

"If the government doesn't do something about it, I think we will see more days like today with more and more unions joining in," PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka told Reuters.

"We need money now," he added.

Britain has seen a wave of strikes in recent months across the public and private sectors, including health and transport workers, Amazon warehouse employees and Royal Mail postal staff.

Education minister Gillian Keegan said the government would not budge, and that giving in to demands for large wage increases would only fuel inflation.

"What we cannot do is give inflation-busting pay rises to one part of the workforce and make inflation worse for everybody. That's not an economically sensible thing to do," she told the BBC.

The National Education Union said some 23,000 schools would be affected Wednesday, with an estimated 85% fully or partially closed. Others also on strike range from museum workers and London bus drivers to coastguards and border officials manning passport control booths at airports.

"It's everybody out... of course there's going to be some disruption and some queues," Phil Douglas, director-general of Border Force, told reporters.

Mick Whelan, general secretary of the train drivers union ASLEF, said the government must now listen to workers' demands.

"Everybody knows somebody working somewhere that's out on strike, about to go on strike or being balloted for strike action," he said. "Quite simply, the government has now got to listen - the people in this country are speaking, and they're speaking volumes that they want a cost-of-living increase."

Badly handled

Sunak's office acknowledged that Wednesday's wave of walkouts will cause "significant disruption" to people, and maintained that "negotiations rather than picket lines are the right approach." But union leaders say the government has refused to negotiate and offer enough to halt the strikes.

Unions have also been angered by the government's plans to introduce a new law aiming to curb strike disruptions by enforcing minimum service levels in key sectors, including health and transport.

Lawmakers on Monday backed the bill, which has been criticized by the unions as an attack on the right to strike.

So far, the economy has not taken a major hit from the industrial action, with the cost of strikes in the eight months to January estimated by the Centre for Economics and Business Research at about 1.7 billion pounds ($2.09 billion), or about 0.1% of expected gross domestic product (GDP).

It put the estimated impact of the teachers' strikes at about 20 million pounds a day.

But the strikes may be having a political impact on Sunak's government.

His Conservative Party trail the opposition Labour Party by some 25 percentage points in polls and surveys indicate the public thinks the government has handled the strikes badly.

Jonathan Novelle, a doctor, said Britain was in a difficult situation given that resources were limited.

"It's sad, teachers... kids want to do their exams and I think there's a huge amount of pressure on everybody. Depressing," he said near London Bridge station.

The strikers are demanding above-inflation pay rises to cover rocketing food and energy bills that they say has left them struggling to make ends meet.

Mary Bousted, general secretary of the National Education Union, told Reuters that teachers in her union felt they had no choice but to strike as declining pay meant high numbers were leaving the profession, making it harder for those that remain.

"There has been, over the last 12 years, a really catastrophic long-term decline in their pay," she said outside a school in south London.

"They are saying, very reluctantly, that enough is enough and that things have to change."

Next week, nurses, ambulance staff, paramedics, emergency call handlers and other health care workers are set to stage more walkouts, while firefighters this week also backed a nationwide strike.

There are also rallies planned for later on Wednesday to protest against a new law to curb strikes in some sectors.

Outside Bishop Thomas Grant School in Streatham, south London, Natasha De Stefano-Honey, a teacher for the last 14 years, said it was the worst period for education she could remember.

"Maybe 10 years ago I would really recommend teaching as a career and now I am one of those teachers that can't recommend it," she said.

TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said industrial unrest would continue until the government puts an acceptable pay offer on the table.

"The message to the government is that this is not going to go away. These problems won't magically disappear," he said.