(Belfast) Exasperated by two years of political paralysis affecting public services in Northern Ireland, tens of thousands of civil servants went on strike on Thursday to demand better pay.
Sixteen unions representing the teaching, transport and nursing sectors are calling for a stop to work in the British province.
Strikers began gathering around pickets early in the morning and demonstrations are planned, notably in Belfast and Londonderry.
The Congress of Trade Unions estimates that 170,000 of Northern Ireland’s 220,000 civil servants will take part in what its general secretary Owen Reidy called “the biggest industrial dispute in Northern Ireland’s history”.
Schools are closed, transport is at a standstill and even the agents responsible for salting the roads are expected to join the movement, in the middle of a cold spell.
The activity of health services is “significantly reduced” according to the government, which calls on Northern Irish people to exercise caution to avoid having to resort to it. Emergencies and essential services will nevertheless be available.
The surge in prices over the past year and a half has caused a serious crisis in purchasing power and numerous social movements in the United Kingdom, but the context is particularly difficult in Northern Ireland. The strike, the cost of which is estimated at more than 10 million pounds sterling (one pound sterling = CA$1.71), comes at a time when the political impasse has lasted for almost two years.
The DUP, the main unionist party, withdrew from local institutions in February 2022 to protest against post-Brexit trade arrangements, which it says threaten Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom.
The Northern Irish Parliament, Stormont, met briefly on Wednesday to try to elect a president (“speaker”), in vain.
Envelope proposed by London
In the absence of a Parliament and a local executive, competent in theory on many subjects such as education or health, London manages current affairs, leading to a drop in funding which is nevertheless crucial for many public services such as hospitals, the maintenance of roads or schools, now in agony.
The British Minister for Northern Ireland, Chris Heaton-Harris, recalled on Monday that a package of 3.3 billion pounds sterling proposed by London last month was available, on the condition that the local assembly at Stormont , which has been shut down for almost two years, is restarting.
In this envelope, around 584 million pounds are intended to increase the salaries of civil servants.
Northern Irish civil servants “are being used as pawns by this discredited conservative government”, railed Wednesday the general secretary of the Congress of Trade Union Organizations, Owen Reidy, stressing that many of them have “not had a raise since three years, despite the post-COVID-19 situation and the cost of living crisis.”
“The money is available”, but the civil servants are “held to ransom”, he denounced.
Unions argue that funds for pay rises must be released as soon as possible regardless of whether local institutions restart, with the DUP accusing London of using the strike as leverage to push the party to end its boycott.
According to DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson, the UK government has the money and powers to make pay rises immediate.
Beyond the current crisis, the vice-president of the Republican party Sinn Fein, big winner of the last elections and in favor of unification with the Republic of Ireland, Michelle O’Neill, expressed on Wednesday her fears about the survival of ” democratic institutions” resulting from the Good Friday Agreement, which in 1998 put an end to three decades of violence in Northern Ireland.