Unions say public sector workers in Northern Ireland are angry at growing pay gap with rest of UK

Further strike action by public sector workers in Northern Ireland is inevitable.

That's the message from furious union leaders after it emerged that their members will not get a pay rise announced for workers in England and Wales.

Nurses, doctors, teachers and police officers are among those set to benefit from a pay rise of up to 7%.

Unions say more strikes will go ahead in the autumn with the possibility of a general strike also on the cards.

The reason for further action in Northern Ireland is a lack of funds.

That's because the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, says he's going to pay for wage hikes by making savings across government, but Stormont departments have made it clear that they've cut as much as they can and no more savings can to be made.

Even if the UK Government were to stump up new money - which Northern Ireland would normally expect to get a share of - the Secretary of State says any money that is received must first be used to repay a £300m overspend.

The Nipsa (Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance) union General Secretary Carmel Gates told UTV workers in Northern Ireland are "already asking questions as to why they aren't getting a similar pay award" to their counterparts in the rest of the UK.

She added that strike action is "inevitable unless the secretary of state changes from the current position that he has set out in the budget, which is that any additional money here must come out of our so-called 'debt'.

"Members are angry across all unions, they are making demands of us that we do something about it, so I would like to see coordination across all of the public sector unions here to organise some generalised action in the Autumn.

"Nobody wants to take strike action but it's going to be inevitable unless there's a change to the system."

Jacquie White, the General Secretary of the Ulster Teachers Union, said "even though we're close to the beginning of the summer vacation we've had members in touch with us as soon as this announcement came out.

"It is serving to exacerbate the gap between the teaching salaries here in Northern Ireland and indeed anywhere else on these islands.

"Our teachers are feelin increasingly undervalued, increasingly as though they don't matter."

Royal College of Nursing Director Rita Devlin told UTV that political institutions have been given "plenty of time to sort themselves out but we can't let our members go any longer in terms of being the worst paid once again in the UK".

"There is nothing now to help us keep retaining the staff that we have," she added.

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