Thousands of public sector workers have staged pickets and marches across Northern Ireland in the biggest strike in living memory.
The combined action by nurses, teachers, bus drivers, carers, cleaners, civil servants and other sectors brought parts of the region to a standstill on Thursday and raised the stakes in a political crisis that has paralysed devolved government.
An estimated 150,000 workers joined the 24-hour strike action, which caused widespread disruption and coincided with icy conditions, prompting many businesses to shut for the day.
Picketers joined groups of people who chanted and waved banners as they streamed into central Belfast, Derry, Enniskillen and Omagh in a show of force by 16 unions.
“People are very angry. We’ve had enough,” said Paul Andrews, Unison’s branch chair for Belfast City hospital. “No one wants to be out here on a freezing day fighting for pay parity. But we are fed up having to beg for equality.”
The strike by approximately 80% of the public sector led to schools closing, buses and trains being left idle, and hospitals operating skeleton services. Road service workers, including gritters, launched a week-long strike.
The Department for Infrastructure urged people not to travel unless it was essential, saying there would be limited gritting on only a handful of roads including the M1, M2, A1 and A4. Some bus drivers privately expressed reservations at driving routes that lacked gritting, saying they would be held responsible for any accidents.
The coordinated protests followed months of separate strikes by individual unions and underscored growing frustration over crumbling public services and political dysfunction.
Deadlock at Stormont, which collapsed two years ago after the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) quit power-sharing, has resulted in public sector workers not receiving pay rises granted to colleagues in the rest of the UK.
In December the government offered £600m for public sector pay claims as part of a £3.3bn financial package for Northern Ireland, but made it conditional on Stormont’s restoration, saying only a devolved government had the authority to disburse the pay rises.
The DUP continued its boycott, leaving Stormont mothballed, but said the secretary of state, Chris Heaton-Harris, could and should disburse the money. It accused him of trying to blackmail the party into abandoning its protest at post-Brexit trading arrangements, which collapsed Stormont in February 2022.
Striking workers directed their ire towards the secretary of state, not the DUP. “Heaton-Harris is using us as hostages to try to force through political change,” said Andrews, as Unison members prepared to march on Belfast city hall. “This is the outcome of treating people as pawns in a greater game.”
Craig Gill, Unite’s lead representative at Belfast City hospital, echoed the accusation. “He wants to use us as a political battering ram. I think today will help him realise that public sector workers are not willing to be used.”
Sonia Ferris, a nurse with the GMB union, said chronic underfunding of the health service had demoralised staff, who felt their sacrifices and commitment counted for little. “The government has forgotten what we did during Covid. For us, it’s not just about pay, it’s working conditions and retention of staff.”
Gerry Murphy, the assistant general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, told the Belfast rally that workers had overcome many obstacles and that one more remained. “That obstacle is Heaton-Harris and his refusal to accept reality and his continuing to pursue a failed political strategy. We will overcome that strategy too. This fight continues until we win – and we will win.”
In a statement, Heaton-Harris said the government had offered a “fair and generous package” that would address public sector pay and that it remained available for an incoming Northern Ireland executive. Without naming the DUP he said it was “regrettable” that a recall of Stormont on Wednesday failed to reboot power sharing. “The people of Northern Ireland deserve local political leadership from representatives they have elected to govern on their behalf.”
Other political parties have blamed both Heaton-Harris and the DUP leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, for the impasse. Michelle O’Neill, Sinn Féin’s deputy leader, told the BBC: “I can only hope that Jeffrey Donaldson is listening and hears the plight of the workers and, even at this late juncture, makes the right call and joins with the rest of us around that executive table and let us do our best to try and support these workers.”
