The NIC-ICTU will launch the Workers Demand Better campaign at 10am Monday 10 October in Parliament Buildings Stormont, Room 115.
The umbrella body of unions who represent over 200,000 working people across Northern Ireland will unveil a detailed and realistic strategy to tackle the cost-of-living crisis to MLAs from all parties.
The campaign is in response to the cost-of-living crisis which is incredibly challenging for workers and their families as we face into winter. Launching the campaign at Stormont is also appropriate as we need serious political solutions to challenging economic problems. The unions intend to take their message to the public with a series of ‘town hall’ meetings in communities across Northern Ireland.
The launch event will feature trade union activists from both private and public sectors who have already taken industrial action, or are preparing to do so.
The event in Stormont’s Room 115 has been sponsored by SDLP MLA Matthew O’Toole and members from all parties have been invited to hear the analysis and proposals from NIC-ICTU.
The events will also be addressed by ICTU Assistant General Secretary Owen Reidy, who will announce that:
The NIC-ICTU intends to mobilise workers across Northern Ireland and lead a progressive movement that demands better for workers after a decade of pay stagnation.
Emerging from Covid 19 workers and their families expected a new approach to work and rewarding those who work. An economy that included everyone and worked for everyone. Many of the workers who were lauded as ‘essential’ during covid are now being treated with contempt and they have had enough and are not prepared to see their pay fall further behind, hence the unprecedented industrial action we will see across Northern Ireland in the coming period.
We intend to engage with workers and communities across Northern Ireland, lobby politicians both here and at Westminster, hold protests and rallies at strategic times and demand that we see stronger better workers rights, where unions can collective bargaining with employers and demand for a better social wage, (i.e. better access to affordable childcare, transport etc)
