PARAMEDICS are to join nurses and other healthcare workers in unprecedented strike action next week - with official notice given to health bosses yesterday.
Officials at the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service (NIAS) last night confirmed that front-line crews, non-emergency staff, control and support staff will take part in a 24-hour walk-out as the dispute over pay and staffing escalates.
Four years ago, a planned round-the-clock paramedic strike was cancelled after ambulance chiefs declared a "major incident" two hours before it was due to begin.
An NIAS spokesman told The Irish News they received official notification from Unison at 4pm yesterday about planned strike action by their members.
It will begin at 7am on December 18 and finish at 7am the following morning.
When asked what type of calls or services will be affected and what contingencies are in place, the spokesman said: "NIAS is currently working with the trade unions in relation to which services and calls will be exempted to ensure that disruption and impact on patients is kept to a minimum.
"Until those discussions are completed, it is not yet possible to quantify the impact on the service. However it is likely that there may be delayed response to some calls.
"NIAS has not yet received any written official confirmation from Unite in relation to their plans to call on their members to take strike action."
Today, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) will take industrial action short of strike for 48 hours.
Its members are due to strike for the first time in the union's 103-year history next week.
Meanwhile, nursing staff at Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry joined Unison's strike action yesterday.
Industrial action has continued after healthcare workers rejected a new pay offer last week.
Thousands of surgeries and appointments have had to be cancelled as a result of disruption across the health service.
Around 900 routine outpatient appointments were cancelled across hospitals in Belfast yesterday.
Unison regional secretary Patricia McKeown said its nurses are "the first to the picket lines in this dispute".
Ms McKeown said the strike continued because the Department of Health did not offer workers parity with their counterparts in Britain.
"Whilst we don't accept the department's position that they need ministerial authority to grant workers pay parity, we have also asked the party leaders to write directly to the department telling them to implement pay parity and resolve this dispute," she said.
"If the department thinks it needs political cover then we don't see why this won't give that to them."
