Derry union members undeterred by the snow as they strike for fair pay

Derry union members remain undeterred by the snow as they strike for fair pay and conditions.

NIPSA Assistant Departmental Secretary for DAERA and Civil Service Brian McGee is on strike outside Orchard House in Derry today.

“NIPSA is the union responsible for both the civil service and education, our campaign aims, number one, that either the Secretary of State, or a restored NI Assembly must immediately end the economic sanctions and pay all public servants what they deserve and properly fund all public services,” he said.

“This must include above inflation pay raises in public sector areas and fully funded public services. This must be long term funding and not have new stealth taxes such as water charges or hospital car park charges.

“Today is only a step on our campaign. NIPSA is fully committed to further action. This will include, alongside our current campaign, NIPSA will continue action short of strike action sector, section wide strike action, sector wide multi union strike action and selective action to support all of our members as we've done in the past when we took out the vets and the portal staff and further generalised strike action right across the public sector."

Orchard House has a workforce of 150 civil servants and has two main departments, the Department for Communities and DEARA.

A total of 15 unions and up to 170,00 workers are participating in today’s strike, which is impacting education, health, transport and the wider civil service.

One economist told the BBC he estimates the strike will result in an economic loss of more than £10 million for the day of the strikes.

You can check where strikes are taking place in Derry and across the North here.

Secretary of State for NI Chris Heaton-Harris recently held another round of talks with each of the North's main political parties. Talks were previously held in December when the UK government offered a £3.3bn financial package if Stormont returned.

This offer has been the source of frustration for many unions with GMB Organiser Alan Perry saying workers ‘will not be used as political pawns’.

Despite the strike action and the £3.3bn offer the DUP remain unwilling to return to Stormont.

A live website has been set to track how long Stormont has been down. You can check here. 

It also tracks how much MLAs have been paid since Stormont collapsed. At time of writing the collective amount paid to MLAs sat at nearly £9 million.