'The industrial action adds insult to injury': Links to News Letter coverage of the January 18 strikes
and live on Freeview channel 276
Jim Wells was reacting to the fact that several thousand health appointments were cancelled as a result of the industrial action, which by some estimates involved up to 170,000 people.
At rallies across Northern Ireland there were calls both for the DUP to return to government and for the Tories to take action now over the £600m or so they have set aside to settle the pay dispute, instead of waiting for Stormont to be revived.
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Hide AdMeanwhile Elliot Keck, head of campaigns of the right-wing lobby group the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: “These wide-scale strikes will horrifically disrupt hard-working taxpayers.
“Given the soaring cost of the public sector, this strike adds insult to injury for households facing a record tax burden.
“Ministers must stand up to union bosses and keep the public sector pay bill under control.”
Mr Wells told the News Letter: “I believe they have a democratic right to withdraw their labour in a pay dispute.
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Hide Ad"But I also believe they have to be wise when they choose to make their point, and it should be at a time when it has less of an impact on the innocent people here, who are the patients waiting for procedures.
"I find that very disappointing.”
Economist and former UUP MLA Esmond Birnie said he fears that “we will start to acquire a reputation as somewhere which has got tremendous problems of industrial relations and a sense of … ‘who is really governing Northern Ireland?’”
Meanwhile the head of Northern Ireland’s largest public sector union said that civil service boss Jayne Brady “came to show her support” at the picket line at Stormont yesterday, an interpretation which the civil service did not dispute when asked.
More coverage here: https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/latest