​Strikes will keep getting “bigger and better” until pay demands are met, a union leader has said

Workers from a number of unions including Unison, Unite, Nipsa and the Society of Radiographers, manned picket lines outside hospitals across Northern Ireland on Thursday, with the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) joining on Friday.

Hundreds of union members and others from the private sector attended a rally outside Belfast City Hall on Friday.

Nipsa general secretary Carmel Gates said more strikes were to come if pay demands were not met.

"This is one of the biggest strikes that we have seen here in many years, and all of you are on strike today but have other colleagues who are actually being balloted just at the minute, who are planning to take strike action in October, so every strike we've had so far has got bigger and better and they're going to keep getting bigger and better until we have pay justice," she said.

She also told the crowd that the strikes on Thursday and Friday were the "most political" she had known in her lifetime.

Ms Gates told the PA news agency she felt the trade union movement was filling a political vacuum left by a lack of government.

"It's a political strike because we are in a complete vacuum in politics. No assembly, and we've got a secretary of state who's sitting back like a colonial ruler," she said.