Ambulance workers on the picket line outside the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, as thousands of health and social care workers, including paramedics, in Northern Ireland take part in strike action over pay and conditions, January 26, 2023
UNIONS are warning that stability in Ireland could be threatened if workers’ rights are “ripped up” under the Retained EU Law Bill.
The TUC and NIC-ICTU (Northern Ireland Committee in the Irish Congress of Trade Unions) issued a joint statement ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement on Monday as the Bill makes its way through parliament.
The unions warned that under the Bill workplace rights such as holiday pay, rest breaks, health and safety rules and protections from discrimination will disappear from the end of this year unless ministers table new regulations to retain them.
Despite Andy Burnham’s declaration defending the continued partition of the island, all major international and internal trends are converging to make Irish reunification inevitable
AARON SMITH discusses why the Protestant diaspora are still part of Yeats’s ‘Indomitable Irishry’, and an integral part of any future united Ireland.
A new group within the NEU is preparing the labour movement for a conversation on Irish unity by arguing that true liberation must be rooted in working-class solidarity and anti-sectarianism, writes ROBERT POOLE