Hundreds of healthcare workers gathered at Belfast City Hall today calling for pay justice as Northern Ireland is the only region in the UK not to receive an offer of a wage increase.
Healthcare workers across Northern Ireland have taken industrial action today as their fight for better pay and working conditions continues.
Unison members from the Belfast and South Eastern Trusts were joined by members of the ambulance service at a protest rally this morning in the city centre before delegates of union members formed a picket outside the Northern Ireland Office at Erskine House where they called on the Secretary of State to meet with them urgently.
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Speaking to Belfast Live, two NHS workers of over 20 years, Karen and Linda said they were very disappointed that healthcare staff in Northern Ireland are yet to receive an offer of a pay increase and that more needs to be done to ensure a safer working environment for patients and staff.
Karen said: "We feel like we are being penalised and it is unacceptable that we are yet to receive any offer of a pay increase despite other regions in the UK receiving one or already have one agreed.
"We do the same jobs as our colleagues in the health service across the UK, with the vast majority of staff going above and beyond for our patients, because we truly care about them, and it is not right that they are being treated differently than us.
"The rising cost of living is having an impact on everyone and we do not want to be out here taking strike action, because we cannot afford it, but we have no other choice in order to get the pay increases that we all deserve."
Linda said: "We have had to inform some of our patients that some clinics would not be going ahead today because of the strike action and everyone has been hugely supportive of what we are doing and understand the importance of fair pay for the NHS.
"Departments across the health service are understaffed and we are all working longer days in order to make sure our patients are looked after, but it is getting to the point that this cannot go on much longer.
"It has got to the stage where the tail is wagging with the dog within the health service."
Unison branch secretaries from across the Belfast and South Eastern Trusts addressed the hundreds of striking healthcare workers at the rally at city hall this morning, demanding that the Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris come to them immediately with a pay offer.
Unison regional secretary Patricia McKeown said: "In a few days time the world's press will descend on this place to celebrate 25 years of our peace agreement that this union backed to the hilt. Where our members walked on the streets and called for and backed the yes vote in the referendum.
"Why did our members do that? Because big promises were made and included in those promises was a better more equal more just society and the way of delivering that was world class public services. That includes the biggest one of all, our health and social care system, the second biggest, our education system, it includes our members who work out there in the community and voluntary sector building on peace everyday.
"We stand here 25 years later with our members of the health service being treated with absolute contempt, without members in education facing outrageous cuts, disadvantaging all sorts of children that will make them hungry. With members in the community and voluntary sector waiting today to find out whether at least 1,700 of them have jobs or not.
"Why is that? One, our own government has walked out on strike and hasn't been seen since, two, because the UK government is using us, the workers of Northern Ireland, the health workers the public sector workers, and others as pawns in a political game and we are here to tell them we are not prepared to be used in that way and we are not prepared to be left behind, we are adamant that we will get justice, not just for our own members or public sector workers, but justice for the public we serve who 25 years on deserve better.
"If they think when the world's press is here, we will be invisible or silent about what is happening 25 years on they have another thing coming.
"Down the street, the UK Government, those are the people who hold the purse strings those are the people who have intervened in England to make a pay offer. The Scottish and Welsh governments have delivered for its people and England the UK Government stepped in.
"Here they behave as though we do not exist and have no value, well if they have not yet learned the response of the people of Northern Ireland to being treated with disrespect or contempt or managed into further inequality then they have misread all of us.
"There has to be a response and we expect to hear from them today or this action continues. Congratulations to all of you, you are heroes one and all."
In Derry, ambulance service worker Roddy Lynch spoke to Belfast Live from the picket line at Altnagelvin Hospital
"No one has considered us," he said. "We're now fourth class citizens. Scotland, Wales and England have all been considered and entered into negotiations about a pay deal. No one has bothered to look about us. We have no one to look after us so we're looking after ourselves, we're out on strike.
"We are well used to it. We were out in 2019 and had to fight for pay equality with our colleagues across the water in England.
"At that time, that's what got the Assembly back up and running again, the healthcare workers going out on strike, but it's come about again."
He added: "We hear politicians talking about unity and equality and yet there is a very clear divide in pay between here in Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom on pay."
Michael Murray, a support services worker on a picket line at Gransha Park just outside Derry, expressed a similar view.
"We've been left behind, as usual," he told Belfast Live. "We hope, eventually, to get the same deal as England but we want it now. We don't want it in ten months.
"We feel that the government are trying to use the health service to push the DUP back into Stormont which is nothing to do with us. We're ordinary working people. We want fair pay. We want the same pay as they're getting in England for doing the same day's work."
He added: "We're fourth out of four."
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