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Tens of thousands of public service workers staged the largest strike in decades in Northern Ireland on Thursday as anger intensified over almost two years of political paralysis at Stormont.
Nurses, teachers, paramedics, classroom assistants, transport workers, civil servants and others in a sector that makes up more than 25 per cent of Northern Ireland’s workforce joined the one-day action to demand pay rises to catch up with their counterparts in Britain.
“Everyone’s just exasperated,” said Helen Graham, 49, a nurse at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast.
Striking workers blamed both the largest pro-UK political party, the Democratic Unionist party, and the government in London for playing politics with workers in a region that is already one of the UK’s poorest, with public services under severe strain.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions said 170,000 workers — 80 per cent of public sector workers in the region of 1.9mn people — joined the “once in a generation” action despite freezing temperatures. Cars and lorries tooted their horns in support as they passed picket lines.
Strikers directed much of their frustration at the DUP, which has collapsed the region’s power-sharing executive at Stormont in a dispute over post-Brexit trading arrangements.
But many blamed Chris Heaton-Harris, UK Northern Ireland secretary, for refusing to release the £600mn he says is available to fund public sector pay in the region.
“What I’m fed up with is our entire livelihoods being used as political pawnage. We’re being held to ransom — the secretary of state has enough power to release the money but he’s choosing not to do it,” said Catherine, a 35-year-old grammar school teacher, who asked not to give her full name.
Teachers in the region say they can earn up to £6,000 less than colleagues in England.
However, Heaton-Harris has said public sector pay is a devolved issue for the region’s executive to deal with. He has put what he called an “extremely generous” £3.3bn funding package on the table, including £600mn for public sector pay, contingent on Stormont being restored.
But the DUP insisted it needed action from London to allay its voters’ Brexit concerns. It wants legislation to reinforce the region’s place within the UK and its ability to trade with Britain. It pulled its first minister out of Stormont in February 2022 and has boycotted the assembly and executive entirely since May 2022.
On Wednesday, it again blocked a bid to recall Stormont, prompting First Minister-designate Michelle O’Neill from Sinn Féin, the nationalist party that is now the region’s largest, to warn that political institutions were “in freefall”.
“If [DUP leader Sir] Jeffrey Donaldson does not change his approach, then this sitting may well be the final one of this assembly,” she said.
The strike coincided with a legal deadline for Heaton-Harris to call fresh elections if Stormont was not restored. He is expected to bring legislation to Westminster next week to delay a vote and give UK officials and local civil servants extra powers but stopping short of direct rule from London.
O’Neill, however, has said Ireland, as co-guarantor with Britain of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended three decades of conflict, had to be involved.
All political parties have called on Heaton-Harris to unlock the funds for public sector pay regardless of whether Stormont is restored.
Carmel Gates, head of the Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance, told thousands of flag-waving striking workers at a rally in Belfast that “if the budget the Treasury is offering is not enough, we will be back here”.