Letters: Strikers are a force for change

It will have been no surprise to your readers that at round-table talks with the main political parties earlier this month, the secretary of state had nothing to offer.

Just as in the face of the growing wave of industrial action across the UK, the Tories think they just have to wait it out. That cynical inaction in Northern Ireland was starkly contrasted by health workers here taking their place in the ranks of those saying “we demand better” through strike action.

Strikers are not waiting around for a visit from Rishi Sunak or to see who blinks first up at Stormont.

Faced with declining standards of living, erosion of wages and conditions, deregulation and the running down of public services in the interests of privatisation and obscene profits, strikers across NI across a range of sectors have shown their resolve to push back and take on the British Tory lies that “we are all in this together” and “there is no alternative”.

Strikers are driving change from below through united collective action – single union action, rolling programmes across sectors, same day strikes, and days of action all have a place in making immediate gains.

The strike wave has the potential to become the motor for change based on unity of purpose in the interests of working people so sorely lacking to date in Northern Ireland politics.

John Pinkerton, Secretary, Greater Belfast Branch, Communist Party of Ireland