Strike action in Northern Ireland is set to intensify after an official from the country’s biggest healthcare union said thousands more workers are expected to be balloted.
A lunchtime rally at the home of the power-sharing assembly, Stormont, included porters, ambulance staff, hospital scientists and others involved in a four-hour walk out.
Patricia McKeown is regional secretary of Unison, which has 25,000 members in Northern Ireland. She said the last time they took strike action the NHS was left with accident and emergency cover only.
She warned: “Our people are facing a stark fifth year of pay freeze and that is having a very adverse impact, particularly on the lowest paid of health workers.
“We have seen an enormous rise in the number of our members having to turn to the benefit system in order to make ends meet, we have seen an extraordinary rise in the number of members who have been using the Unison internal welfare system to help them out of serious financial difficulties.
“At the same time they have not stopped delivering 365 days a year, delivering health care and social care to people right across Northern Ireland in the face of all sorts of cutbacks; they are under big stress and big pressure.”
Staff in Northern Ireland were taking action from 11am to 3pm on Monday but only two unions were involved; the GMB and Unite, which represent nurses, healthcare assistants, ambulance staff, porters, administration workers and cleaners.
Unison in Northern Ireland is not participating following talks with former Stormont health minister Edwin Poots earlier this year.
Ms McKeown said the budget crisis at Stormont had affected those discussions as she attended the rally in solidarity with strikers.
“We are here with a very clear message to our politicians today; we need a response very quickly otherwise Unison, which is the biggest union in the health service in Northern Ireland, will ballot for strike action.
“We did it in 2011 in protest at cuts in health care and we brought the service to accident and emergency cover only, we don’t want to do that but we must move to protect the interests of our people who are in a very serious situation now.”
Health minister Jim Wells said he hoped to make an announcement soon on the 2014/15 pay award.
“It is regrettable that Unite has decided to take this action at this time. The financial challenges facing the Department are well known. I am considering all options available before issuing my response to both the NHS Pay Review Body 28th Report and the Review Body for Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration 42nd Report recommendations.
“I value the hard work and commitment of all health and social care staff and wish to ensure that any decision made in relation to pay protects and properly staffs the frontline.”
More than 4,000 NHS staff in Northern Ireland went on strike today.
Kevin McAdam, a Unite official with responsibility for health service matters, said workers were not seeking an unaffordable rise.
He said the agreement reached in Scotland to pay a living wage and give a 1% pay rise could end up saving the Government money.
In Northern Ireland he claimed pay had decreased by 12%-15% over the last four years and part of the problem was maintaining the quality of the service.
“If we are going to erode health workers’ pay, people are not going to come into the service and that is going to impact on all of us.”
Sally Haggan, a biomedical scientist at the City Hospital in Belfast specialising in the study of blood, said staff worked hard and long and received no thanks for it.
“Lowly paid staff are not even earning a living wage, there are food banks going up all around the place for people in work, it is the working poor that we have in Belfast, it is disgraceful.”
David Smith, 41, a porter at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, said he had not received a pay rise for four years.
“People are just sick and tired of it now and just want their voice to be heard and want what they deserve, what they are entitled to – fair pay for fair work.”
Isabella Owens works in the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service’s control room.
She said: “Over the past couple of years we have had a massive 15% pay cut in real terms, we are not getting a pay rise, the cost of living is going up and we all have bills to pay.
“With all the cuts that are coming in it is affecting the service, it is going to affect the public.”
Another ambulance worker, Denise Baker, said: “It is frightening what is happening. If they knew exactly what was going on, if there was a relative of yours, a relative of mine, lying there and there is no ambulance to send because they are all out on calls, we just don’t have enough ambulances.”
Source Article from https://uk.news.yahoo.com/unison-may-ballot-staff-over-strike-134219728.html
Unison may ballot staff over strike
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