Derry Journal Editorial: Political failure has led to historic Mass Strike and winter of discontent

The mass public sector strike – the largest in the north in living memory - exposes how repeated political missteps and missed opportunities have negatively impacted people’s pay packets and other aspects of their lives here – and on the very day that the latest deadline for forming an Executive runs out.

It is disgraceful that it has come to this. For months now, people working across the public sector have been held to ransom with neither the Secretary of State nor the DUP moving to ensure the pay uplift due and desperately needed by so many is delivered.

Politics is failing people here and far too often we see people’s priorities and their right to a decent standard of living sacrificed to rigid ideologies, posturing and keeping up appearances. The fact that there is no government during a cost of living, health and employment crisis is a dereliction of duty.

Pay is a major issue but it is not the only issue facing workers in the public and private sectors. You only have to look at the growing number of workers who feel they have no option but to down tools and strike in this long winter of discontent to see the pressures people in work are facing.

If there is to be political change in 2024, these issues must be prioritised, but right now those who have it within their gift to award the pay uplift should put people above politicking and do the decent thing.