Latest ONS figures show that the number of working days lost due to labour disputes in 2015 was 170,000 compared with 788,000 in 2014. The 2015 figure was the second lowest annual total since records began in 1891. The decrease of working days lost in 2015 was mainly attributable to a number of large scale public sector strikes in 2014. Pay was once again the principal cause of labour disputes in 2015. This has been the main cause of labour disputes for the last ten years, with the exception of 2009 and 2010, when the main cause was redundancy. The public and private sector saw the same amount of disputes in 2015 in a change to recent history. However, the public sector had more working days lost than the private sector.

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