UNISON: NI health workers to decide on strike action
Health workers across Northern Ireland were today (Thursday) being balloted on industrial action.
UNISON said its ballot was the result of a recommendation from a pay review body, which it said is insufficient to cover the needs of health workers.
Earlier this year, the independent review body recommended that health service staff in the UK should be awarded a pay increase of £1,400 for 2022/23.
But Northern Ireland's Health Minister Robin Swann has previously warned that the pay increases cannot be implemented in the region without an agreed Stormont budget.
The union also said the Westminster Government has not made additional funds available to the health service in Northern Ireland.
UNISON Northern Ireland 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."
The union's Northern Ireland head of Bargaining and Representation, Anne Speed, said: "Porters, nurses, security guards, paramedics, cleaners, midwives, occupational therapists, social workers and other health and social care staff in Northern Ireland will be given the opportunity to vote for industrial action and action short of strike."
In August, the Royal College of Nursing in Northern Ireland announced that it was joining colleagues across the UK in balloting for strike action.
Nurses in the rest of the UK have never gone on strike before, but their counterparts in Northern Ireland took industrial action in 2019.
Mr Swann has previously stated that the level of funding required to meet pay demands of health workers would require the Westminster Government to make more available to administrations across the UK.
The health minister has said he does not currently have the money to implement the recommendations of the independent panel on health workers' pay, never mind the additional uplift the unions are asking for.
Stormont is without an agreed budget for 2022/23 due the current power-sharing impasse.