Government urged to 'take long hard look' at pay for Northern Ireland health issues

Healthcare workers in Northern Ireland say they feel left behind compared to their counterparts in the rest of the UK over pay levels.

Thousands of health and social work staff too to picket lines on Thursday morning for a 48-hour strike action in their pay dispute.

The strike involves some nurses, ambulance and hospital support staff. They will also be joined by the Society of Radiographers.

Health and social care workers in Northern Ireland remain the lowest paid in the United Kingdom and have yet to be offered an uplift for 2023-24.

Earlier this week the Department of Health warned of disruption to services.

Melissa Traynor from the Society of Radiographers said: "It is a hard decision [to strike] but we have been back into a corner, we're tired of being forgotten, I think the pay parity issue when you consider Northern Ireland against England, Scotland and Wales we are being left behind financially."

Speaking on the picket line at Altnagelvin Hospital, Brenda Stevenson from Unite feels health workers have been overlooked for too long.

"Our NHS staff are the beating heart of our public service, and they're being treated as if they don't matter anymore, they don't matter to government, the public have got behind us they've won the hearts and minds of the general public.

"Government need to take a long hard think about what they are doing and they need to get pay parity and look at pay structures across the board," added Stevenson.

Workers from a number of unions including Unison, Unite and Nipsa, as well as the Society of Radiographers, will join picket lines outside hospitals across Northern Ireland.

The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) also joined industrial action on Thursday morning, with the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) announcing its intention to strike on Friday.

Kevin McAdam, lead officer for Unite, said the action was a continuation of strikes from last year, and workers wanted to “make sure the healthcare service is sustained”.

“As workers, our claim is to those that can pay, and currently that’s the British Government, is to give our workers what they’ve afforded to people in England and Scotland and Wales. We want at least that’s what we’re looking for,” he said.

“We’re not into politics. It’s not who should pay, the Government pay the health service and they need to pay the health service workers.”

Mr McAdam said workers were facing a “morale deficit”.

“The workers are at the coalface and know what’s going wrong, but they also have a morale deficit that they really can’t cope with. People are just at the end of their tethers, and another thing they don’t have is – they have no forward vision, they can’t see a pay rise.

“No pay rise for this year when inflation is running (high) so that’s just intolerable, so what is the morale like? It couldn’t be lower.”

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