Hard-working civil servants have kept many essential services functioning throughout the pandemic. Many are key workers. We share their disappointment and frustration at Sinn Féin Minister for Finance Conor Murphy’s decision to refuse the request from NIPSA to reinstate pay lost during strike action.
Penalising strike action to improve terms and conditions has long been used to undermine workers’ rights and trade unions. Going back to the 1913 Dublin Lockout it has been used to starve workers into submission. Civil servants and health service workers were forced to take strike action after years of derogatory pay freezes and cuts imposed by the Stormont Executive.
Nurses and health service workers had their pay reinstated following public outrage that they would be penalised for courageously taking strike action for better pay, to increase staffing levels and to save the health service following year on year attacks.
The reality is that the Stormont Executive was embarrassed into restoring health service workers’ pay.
The demand of civil servants is no different from health service workers. Mr Murphy’s decision makes a mockery of commitments to workers rights in the New Decade, New Approach.
The minister plays up the meagre two per cent increase civil servants received but there’s no acknowledgement that those with decision-making powers were responsible for unjustly prolonging the strike.
The dispute could and should have been resolved at a much earlier date. This only compounds the injustice. Mr Murphy should reverse his decision.
Platitudes aside, the political establishment here doesn’t see equality for workers as a central objective. It’s something they are forced to respond to when workers take action or when there’s public outrage.
The role of workers during the pandemic has underscored their central importance to society but also the way so many have been devalued. The demand for workers’ rights brings people from all backgrounds and communities together.
This solidarity is going to become all the more important in the weeks and months ahead.
Cllr SHAUN HARKIN
People Before Profit, Derry and Strabane Council
It is hard to be hopeful at present that health minister will address Watt affair
Dr Norman Hamilton writes that the Minister of Health seems to “believe in openness, truthfulness in high places, and in the public example of leadership which has real honesty as a driver” ( Faith Matters, May 28 ).
If that is indeed the case then it is to be hoped that Mr Swann will act soon to resolve a long-standing problem – the failure of the RQIA to begin the review of the cases of the deceased patients of Michael Watt, the suspended neurologist.
That review was announced at the start of May 2018 and I, the son of one of those deceased patients, was assured by the RQIA’s then chief executive in June two years ago that work on it would begin the following September.
I fear that it is at present hard to be hopeful that Mr Swann will do anything about this scandal. Earlier this month I learned from an MLA that the review was suspended on March 20 last.
Even though I am an interested party I was not informed of this suspension and, so far as I am aware, this development was not disclosed to the press. No date has been announced for the resumption of work on the review.
If the Minister of Health does indeed possess the qualities Dr Hamilton attributes to him then he will act soon to end the suspension of the review and will do all he can to ensure that it is completed swiftly. The Watt affair is a matter of public interest and if it is to be understood properly then the cases of the deceased patients as well as those of the living need to be examined.
COLIN ARMSTRONG
Belfast BT12
Everyone needs to act responsibly
The Black Lives Matter rally at Belfast City Hall last Wednesday at which I spoke, was a powerful and important display of solidarity with the movement against racist police brutality in the US, as well as racism and oppression here.
Minister for the Economy Diane Dodds implicitly criticised the protest, urging the need to “act responsibly” in the midst of the pandemic.
Of course, it is important that those who turn out to demonstrate their solidarity also keep their distance from others and wear PPE, as far as possible. However, the Northern Ireland Executive as a whole have not acted responsibly when it comes to enforcing health and safety in workplaces.
Many clearly non-essential businesses have been allowed to continue uninterrupted throughout lockdown, often without proper distancing measures and PPE. And the executive is rushing to get pubs and restaurants open as quickly as possible, in direct response to the demands of the hospitality bosses.
The meat industry, in particular, has seen significant clusters of infection. Yet the executive has refused to take meaningful action.
LUCY MARRON
Belfast BT4
Double standards
We have seen extensive media coverage and protests over at the unfortunate death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Such coverage and interest was notable by its absence when a white woman, Justine Damond, was murdered by a black police officer in the same city three years ago.
The protesters tell us that black lives matter but I would argue that white lives are just as important.
ADRIAN LONERGAN
Belfast BT7
Irish dancing at Mass
One thing I surely understand is that when at Mass celebrating the Eucharist Christ’s presence is really, truly experienced – so meaningful that it can only be described as, “Through Him, with Him and in Him.”
When in the presence of the Eucharist my experience is nothing less than a living engagement. That that commitment is subjected to an unfortunate intrusion by way of musical expression, such as The Sash and Irish dance, is nothing short of a travesty. Moreover, the Catholic Church has been universal for some time and does not require online detrimental posts, such as these, to further its mission.
WILSON BURGESS
Derry City
