WORKERS PARTY OF IRELAND STATEMENT

ON DAY OF MASS INDUSTRIAL ACTION

The strike by public sector workers in Northern Ireland on 18^th January, the biggest industrial strike in Northern Ireland in 50 years, represented a militant and determined stand by workers and their unions in an unprecedented escalation of their action over pay and conditions and the protection of public services. 

The successful generalised day of action across Northern Ireland involved workers across every sector, including government administrative staff, healthcare and education workers, teachers and lecturers, roads maintenance teams and transport workers, including bus and train staff. 

This mass action was the culmination of a series of actions over the past two years and has been about much more than specific demands. It has concerned defending and ensuring quality public services in the face of a relentless campaign of budget cuts, austerity measures, low wages, poor working conditions, the rundown of public services and continuing attempts at privatisation, implemented by the bourgeois parties against the interests of working people and their families. 

As thousands of workers across the public sector prepared to take part in Northern Ireland’s biggest ever day of industrial action, the campaign to undermine their stand, obscure the arguments and divert attention away from the core issues heightened. Sections of the bourgeois media and right-wing commentators attempted to divide workers, hype up public inconveniences and questioned the effectiveness of industrial action. 

The striking workers were not deterred and public opinion backed the industrial action. Working people recognised that public services, and wage levels that reflect the skills and dedication of those who provide them, are central to the security and quality of life of the people. They understood that workers withdraw their labour and take to the streets to protect services, pay and conditions in the face of over ten years of underfunding, under resourcing, derisory pay and conditions and the erosion of public services. 

There is no alternative to mass and militant industrial action. Over the past three years workers have pressed their claims for pay parity, above inflation pay rises, improved conditions and the protection of public services. Those claims have been ignored and dismissed. Conditions have deteriorated and services have declined. During that time the Workers Party of Ireland has stood on the picket lines with those workers. Our Party members participated in today’s mass actions and will continue to support their struggles. 

The WPI welcomes the increased militancy by trade unions; the determination to struggle for proper pay, conditions and pensions for workers; against low paid, precarious and casualised work; and against the privatisation of public services. 

The Workers Party of Ireland reasserts the necessity and centrality of class struggle. 2024 will be another year of class struggle and an opportunity to intensify that struggle; demonstrating the increasing contradictions of the capitalist system; its increasingly reactionary response to the people’s demands and its inability to meet their needs; and the certainty that the construction of a new society, a socialist future, remains the only alternative for the emancipation of labour and the working peoples of the world. 

Gerry Grainger

International Secretary

Workers Party of Ireland 

(Email: wpi.international@gmail.com)