Translink workers in Derry on strike today for better pay

Trade unions SIPTU, Unite and GMB announced that Translink will face strike action on December 15, 16, and 22.

Translink bus driver and Unite representative Damien Doherty said: “When we sat around the table for pay talks, Translink they told us they weren't in a position to give us any offer at all this year, as they hadn't got any funding because the funding had been cut so much by the Department of Infrastructure, which has come on the back of the Secretary of State, Chris Heaton Harris' punitive budgets for our region at the moment.”

Damien says Translink workers submitted a pay claim in April this year but were informed that there was no money for it because of the budget cuts.

“On the back of that, we held a consultative ballot among all of our members in Translink,” Damien continued. “It returned with 96 percent in favour of taking industrial action rather than accepting a 0 per cent pay offer. We then followed up with a postal ballot and that came back with 98 percent vote in favour of strike action, and we actually had a 75 per cent return on that postal ballot which is way above average. That gives you an idea of the feeling among our workers as well.”

Striking workers have received some backlash for causing disruption to Christmas shoppers but Damien says this wasn’t their intention.

"We didn't particularly set out to upset the hospitality trade or anything like that. Whenever we discussed what type of action we were going to take and how we were going to do it, there were suggestions of going for an all-out strike. There were suggestions of striking for whole weekends throughout the month of December, but we decided that we would need to take into consideration people who were trying to get prepared for Christmas and get their shopping. We also know there's a lot of people in rural areas who rely on our bus services to get them to the bigger cities and towns so they could get their Christmas shopping done. So, we decided this weekend to do the two days, partly because it was such a busy weekend and it will raise awareness, but we pulled back on Saturday the 23rd, and kept it one day because we didn't want to impede anybody who is getting their last pieces for Christmas.

"At the end of the day, the public are the people that we serve, and we rely on them and we value them, so we wanted to make sure we could do as much as we can. But at the same time, we had to make some type of statement from where we are as a workforce.

"People can point a finger at Translink but they haven't got the funding, which we have to respect. We point a finger at the Department of Infrastructure who then confirmed that the funding wasn't there, so then we point a finger further up. And ultimately, for us, the buck stops with Chris Heaton Harris because he's the one who has enforced these budgets and he's also the one who can change this.”