Health strike looming in Northern Ireland as union with largest number of health worker members begins ballot on industrial action

Unison say that the pay offer to health workers is “inadequate” adding that they are "not prepared to have our members be abandoned when they have done so much over the last two and a half years in dealing with the pandemic”. Similar action by Unison three years ago was instrumental in causing the return of the Executive to resolve the dispute.

Commenting on the strike ballot, Unison’s NI regional secretary Patricia McKeown said: “The Pay Review Body has made a recommendation that won’t help our members pay their bills in the face of the cost of living crisis. That’s why we have no alternative but to move to ballot our members for industrial action. Not only is the recommendation of the Pay Review Body inadequate, but worse still government at Westminster have made no money available to ministers in Northern Ireland to fund a pay rise.

“Unison is not prepared to have our members be abandoned when they have done so much over the last two and a half years in dealing with the pandemic. In the face of a cost of living crisis, our members need a decent, fair pay rise. Unison does not advocate for strike action as the first option. It’s always a measure of last resort. But for our members there is no alternative left.”

As well as Unison, NIPSA also opened an industrial action ballot of health services members today. GMB’s ballot began on October 24 and runs until November 29. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) ballot opened on October 6 and runs to November 2. Unite the union are also balloting NHS workers although no balloting has taken place yet in NI.

Director of the RCN in NI, Rita Devlin, told BBC Talkback nurses are “in limbo” due to the non-functioning Assembly.

She said: “We know that we're coming into the worst winter I think that any of us in health will ever have experienced, it's been telegraphed since May.

"We have patients lying in trolleys, lying in the back of ambulances, not able to get appointments, in poor health getting worse. We have a non-functioning group of executives in the Assembly and nobody making any decisions."