An estimated 1,500 people took part in the ICTU rally in the centre of Belfast last Saturday (18th October). Similar rallies took place in London and Glasgow, where tens of thousands took to the streets. The rally brought together the campaign by the NI committee of Congress, A pay rise for all, with the TUC’s Britain needs a pay rise campaign. Both campaigns have called for pay rises for workers whose real-term incomes have fallen by an average of €63.00 a week since 2008.
Peter Bunting, Ictu assistant general secretary in Belfast said “Getting money back into the pockets of working people is the key to any genuine recovery – and that is true of all economies across Europe. Northern Ireland has the highest number of low paid workers of any UK region. Almost a quarter of NI workers earn below the living wage, and that number is increasing.
“Pay rises are the only sure way we can kickstart growth and get people back to work. That is why unions in Northern Ireland joined with the TUC in organising a series of major demonstrations. We need to raise wages, which have not kept pace with prices since the 1970s, in most countries. Falling wages feed inequality, poverty and social division. We need a pay rise for all” he said.
TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said the high turnout sent a strong message to the government that wages need to rise.“Our message is that after the longest and deepest pay squeeze in recorded history, it’s time to end the lock-out that has kept the vast majority from sharing in the economic recovery”. Protesters in Belfast called for an enforced minimum wage and commitments to a living wage for everyone, as well as a crackdown on excessive executive pay and bonuses and on tax evasion and avoidance.
IMPACT general secretary, Shay Cody, told delegates at the union’s biennial delegate conference in May that virtually everyone was worse off now than they were a few years ago, “but it has happened in different ways depending on where you work and what your personal circumstances are.” He said that unions were now “moving from the necessary and difficult defensive position of the last half-decade to a strategy of income recovery.”
