16 December 2022
UNIONS URGE PROMPT ENERGY PAYMENTS FOR HOUSEHOLDS
NIC-ICTU calls for an end to the UK Government’s prevarication over giving families across Northern Ireland the energy assistance they were promised last May.
Speaking after another delay , ICTU General Secretary Owen Reidy said:
“This latest delay for a vital service which can keep people safe and healthy is an insult added to injury. This inability to provide help to taxpayers and benefit claimants beggars belief in an advanced economy. Are HM Government seriously claiming that they cannot reach out to citizens and residents after nearly seven months of delayed implementation of promises made last May?
“The reasons for this delay are either incompetence during a period of internal feuding within the Tory Party, or these essential payments are being used as bargaining chips in negotiations with local political parties. Neither reason is acceptable. Families are feeling uncertain and frightened at a time of year when they expect and deserve some ease and comfort with their loved ones. Secretary of State Heaton-Harris ought to meet with the representatives of working people, who can relay to him the facts of fuel poverty, low pay and precarious work.”
ENDS
NOTES FOR EDITORS:
The Workers Demand Better campaign was launched last month and is a unified trade union-led strategy to tackle the cost-of-living crisis for working people and their communities across Northern Ireland.
The key campaign messages for politicians and the public were agreed with the full engagement of unions representing workers in the private and public sectors and include:
- Government support and resources to households, (prioritising those on fixed incomes and low to middle incomes) to assist them when it comes to the cost of energy over the next number of months.
- Along with pay improvements in each workplace, we need to see the state address the social wage.
- Governments need to engage with the trade union movement and start implementing progressive policies that support workers and their families. The trade union manifesto, No Going Back – A new deal towards a safe and secure future for all, has serious policies which must be advanced.
- A robust NI Employment Bill that promotes workers’ rights and stronger collective bargaining, leading to better pay, which includes key elements of the recent EU Directive on an Adequate Minimum Wage, as a centrepiece in any Programme for Government of the NI Executive.
ENDS
