Day of action is ‘only the start’, unions in North pledge

Halfway down Belfast’s main thoroughfare, you hear them before you see them.

Whistles, chants and the boom of a PA system echo around Royal Avenue as a sea of purple, red and blue flags come into view outside City Hall on Tuesday morning.

Billed as a “strike rally”, thousands of teachers and healthcare staff have converged at the gates of the landmark building after leaving early pickets lines for the “day of action” over pay.

A kilted bagpiper leads one group of NHS workers as they roar their demands behind him; they are greeted with the sound of bongo drums and acoustic protest songs in what has the feel of a free family concert with kids aloft adult shoulders.

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But the mood turns defiant as speeches get under way and the crowd erupts in response to one trade union representative warning this is “only the start”.

Gerry Murphy, northern secretary of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation, insists the walkouts are “not pointless” amid political deadlock.

“Can you hear us there, 100 yards down the road in the NIO?” he shouts into a microphone.

“The public should know this is only two sectors of the public service. By the middle of March every public servant in the North will go on strike or is about to go on strike.

“There are bigger days than this ahead.”

In what is the first major strike action by the North’s four main teaching unions in six years – NHS workers have staged repeated walkouts – classrooms did not reopen until noon.

The rally is among seven co-ordinated events in towns and cities across Northern Ireland calling for a hike in wages and reversal of frontline cuts.

One trade union – the National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers – is asking for a 12 per cent increase in salaries.

Workers say there has been a 38 per cent real term cut to teachers’ wages since 2010.

Daniel Hanna, a PE teacher at Malone College in Belfast, stands alongside his newly-qualified brother at City Hall and says he is striking over pay “but conditions as well”.

“I’ve only been teaching nine years but already seen a massive difference in that time,” he tells The Irish Times.

“There’s cuts year after year and that impacts on the quality of education. Teaching is a vocation, it sounds a bit cheesy but it’s a bit of a calling – it’s a job you really want to be in.

“You believe you are in it for the right reasons but when there’s constant cuts and constant fear of a lack of funding, I feel you can’t do your job adequately at times.”

His younger brother, David Hanna, admits his new job “is not what I expected”:

“I had to go out and buy my own supplies, colouring-in pencils, sheets to draw on.

“It’s impossible to get a mortgage as a young teacher starting out.”

Many teachers in the North were offered a 3.2 per cent pay rise over the past two financial years.

The department of education says “active engagement” has been taking place between management and the teachers’ negotiating committee on a pay settlement – and will continue.

But they noted the talks were happening during a time of “growing and unprecedented financial pressures”.

Last month, more than 20,000 healthcare staff went on a one-day strike. Nurses and ambulance workers have also taken part in mass walkouts.

A £1,400 pay award was rejected by health service trade unions as they said it was below inflation; the North’s department of health said it understood the frustration of staff but that there was “no scope for resolution at local level” in the absence of an Executive and budget constraints,

A group of occupational therapists are among the City Hall crowd.

“We have gone on strike before but it feels different today as it’s affecting everyone,” says Anne Marley, an OT based in a community brain injury rehab team.

“We’re working hard but it’s the people in the community who are suffering as we don’t have the staffing to provide the rehabilitation needs.”

“Short staffing is the problem,” adds her colleague Oonagh Morley. “It’s about attracting people in but it’s also about keeping people as a lot have left over the past few years.”

As the crowds disperse and schools reopen their doors, a member of a trade union representing bakers stands across the road waving an enormous red and white flag.

“We’ve come in solidarity,” he says. “I’m 60 but today I feel 19. Up the workers.”