LONDON - If the labor situation in the United Kingdom continues on its current thorn-covered path, here's how the country will function - or not: Fire engines will not run, airplanes will not fly and the mail will go undelivered.
And that is the labor situation under a Labor Party government.
Today, firefighters are into the second day of a two-day nationwide strike with another one - for eight days - scheduled to begin next week.
That has left most urban areas relying on plodding 50-year-old fire engines, operated by military personnel, to respond to everything from industrial blazes to road accidents. In the first 15 hours of the walkout, three people died in fires.
The firefighters' strike comes after subway strikes left London in gridlock this summer and municipal strikes left garbage uncollected and museums closed.
Labor-led challenge
By far, though, the firefighters' strike represents the most significant labor-led challenge to Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labor government since the party reclaimed power in 1997 - after losing it largely because of a series of similar but more prolonged strikes during the "winter of discontent" in 1979.
But Blair, while maintaining that his party is still the best suited to fight for the working class it was formed 102 years ago to represent, has staunchly refused to give in to the union's demand: a 40 percent raise that would bring the typical firefighter's wages to about $46,000 a year. The government has offered 11 percent.
"No country on Earth could give in to such demands," Blair told Parliament as firefighters were walking out of their stations.
Much in the way Bill Clinton moved the Democratic Party in the United States to the political center, so has Blair done with his Labor Party, recasting it as the centrist "New Labor."
Rather than meeting the demands of the Fire Brigade Union that called the strike, his government is considering tactics that, in the past, would have been more closely associated with the era of Margaret Thatcher, when her Conservative Party was in power.
Crossing the lines
Among the measures under consideration is having the military fill-ins cross picket lines to use the more modern fire engines sitting idle in their stations.
The military is now using "Green Goddess" fire engines, equipment built a half-century ago as a precaution in case of a nuclear strike by the Soviet Union.
Considered state of the art at the time, they are vastly inferior to the red fire engines used by the regular fire brigades around Britain.
The Green Goddesses have the limitations of garbage trucks in both speed and mobility; they do not carry as much water as the red engines and are not equipped with any breathing apparatus.
'Backed into a corner'
There are about 800 Green Goddesses scattered around Britain, compared with more than 4,000 red engines normally in use. Eighteen thousand military personnel are on standby to do the work of 52,000 strikers.
"Anybody counting on those to save them in a fire doesn't know any better," says David James, 30, a striking firefighter picketing in Central London.
"No firefighter wants to be out here while we know people are going to be hurt. We've been backed into a corner."
The immediate issue is not only money but working conditions.
The government wants the fire departments reformed in training and scheduling, which has been forcefully opposed by the fire union. Currently, firefighters work two 24-hour days, then are off for four straight days.
Nobody could say with confidence whether the three deaths reported in the first hours of the strike could have been avoided had firefighters been on duty, but in the battle for public opinion each side in the dispute is accusing the other of putting people at risk.
Subways, airports
The strike has had other repercussions.
London's subway - completely shut down for two days during the summer by striking rail car drivers - closed 22 stations, causing long delays for many of its 4 million passengers. The stations, which had only elevators and no escalators, were closed because of safety concerns.
Last week, airport workers voted to strike on 10 separate days just as the busy year-end travel season begins. Yesterday, postal workers voted to strike and will announce stoppage dates next week.
All of this has led the tabloids in the country to compare the current labor situation to the winter of discontent, when a series of strikes created, among other problems, garbage piles on the streets and delays in burying bodies.
Ultimately, the strikes were blamed for helping usher out the Labor government of James Callaghan and sweeping in the Conservative Party, which has never been a friend to unions.
"Whatever this is, it won't turn into another winter of discontent," says David Jarvis, a historian and political observer at the University of Cambridge.
"The fire strike would have been better avoided for everybody involved, but I think there's still some political mileage for the Labor Party in holding firm against the Fire Brigade Union."
Still, he acknowledges that the strike and strike threats are a political concern for Blair, who has made improving public services a priority of his second term.
New leaders
Blair is up against a new wave of union leaders, whose tactics have become more radical even as the ranks of unionized workers have shrunk from 55 percent to only 30 percent over the past two decades.
The leader of the public-sectors unions, John Edmonds, has promised to "bury" Blair's party.
Eddie Morgan, the assistant general secretary of the Labor Party, says the threats by Edmonds show more the desperation of a small band of radical union leaders than their strength.
The number of days lost to strikes in the past two years is lower than in the last five years of the Conservative government, he says, and most people in the country see the benefit in controlling spending while seeking union reforms.
"People have offered a simplistic analysis that the Labor Party has seized the political center," says Morgan. "It's more sophisticated than that.
"The Labor Party has seized the center and has been moving the center to the left. Most union members who have seen sustained increases in wages recognize that.
"Only a few people - a few leaders - have not."