Cost-of-living crisis: Royal Mail and BT workers rally in Belfast city centre

A crowd of hundreds congregated outside city hall at the rally organised by the Communication Workers Union (CWU).

Members of other trade unions stood in solidarity with the Royal Mail, BT and Openreach workers and their strike action over pay.

Representatives from a range of trade unions addressed the crowd from a platform at the lunchtime event.

Elsewhere in Belfast, staff working for the Reach media group also staged a picket amid an ongoing pay dispute.

It came as Reach colleagues across the UK and Ireland walked out after weekend negotiations between the company and the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) ended without agreement.

Across the UK, strikes or ballots for industrial action are being announced virtually every day as workers across the country join the growing campaign for pay rises to match soaring inflation in the face of the cost-of-living crisis.

Unions have described it as a “summer of solidarity” amid worsening industrial relations and accusations from union officials that the government is doing little or nothing to help workers struggling with mounting bills.

At the rally at city hall, CWU national executive council member Andy Mercer said: “The message has been loud and clear – our members are 100% behind this trade union and 100% behind their colleagues.

“We’ve seen that from the votes that they returned in the ballots that we have done and certainly on the picket lines.

“There’s very few Openreach and BT workers working and very few Royal Mail group workers working over these strike days and that gives us the biggest show of support that we can get as a trade union.

“The cost of inflation is impacting on all of our members, but what they’re telling us is if they don’t fight it now and they don’t win this fight, it’s only going to get worse in the future. Enough is enough.

“It’s time big companies and CEOs realise they need to start rewarding their workers and not themselves and that is the message that comes loud and clear from our members.”

The postal workers’ strike came after the CWU rejected Royal Mail’s 2% pay offer.

Royal Mail has criticised the action. It said the company is losing £1 million a day and claimed the CWU’s strike was “making our situation worse”.

The BT and Openreach action is protesting against the BT Group’s flat-rate pay rise of £1,500.

The BT Group said it had made the best pay award it could, insisting it was the highest increase in 20 years.

Elsewhere in the UK, barristers in England and Wales are set to start an indefinite strike over government-set fees for legal aid work from Monday.

On September 8 and 9, Royal Mail workers in the CWU are set to strike again over pay.

On September 11, a strike ballot of Unite’s NHS members in England is set to close, with a ballot of the trade union’s membership in the NHS in Wales set to close on September 16 in a disupte centred on pay.

Just days later, a ballot of members of the Royal College of Nursing on a possible strike is set to open on September 15 in England, Scotland and Wales.

Northern Ireland nurses, meanwhile, are also set to take part in a similar strike ballot by the Royal College of Nursing but the dispute has been complicated here by the absence of a Stormont Executive.

The power-sharing deadlock means even the pay deal health unions have said they are unhappy with has not been put forward, with Health Minister Robin Swann citing the need for Executive approval for the necessary budgetary adjustment.

Later in the month, on September 26, a national strike ballot opens of Public and Commercial Service union members over pay, pensions, jobs and redundancy terms.

On the same date, members of the Transport Salaried Staffs Association at a number of rail companies are due to stage a 24-hour strike in the long-running row over pay, jobs and conditions.

And the possibility of strike action causing disruption to Northern Ireland’s school system remains, with members of the NASUWT teaching union having already voted in favour of a strike earlier this year and INTO due to ballot members.