Video and pix: Strikers take to the picket lines and stage rally in York
Strikers took to picket lines across York and North Yorkshire today – as they joined Walkout Wednesday.
They were among around 500,000 workers nationwide taking part in the biggest strike in a decade.
Members of seven trade unions are taking industrial action, affecting schools, universities, trains and buses.
Thousands of schools closed for the day because of action by the National Education Union (NEU). Civil servants, train and bus drivers and university staff also stopped work on the biggest single day of strikes in a decade.
At midday, the York Trades Union Council held a rally at Exhibition Square. Gary, a member of the National Education Union told the large crowd: “Over the past few years, teachers have seen a real terms pay cut of 24% – for a teacher on a median teaching salary that equates to £64,000 lost during that time.
“We’re not asking for the Earth. We’re asking for our pay to be raised in line with inflation, inflation that their gangster capitalism has caused.”
Rally – YorkMix Facebook Live video
We’re live at the TUC Trades Council Rally in York
Posted by YorkMix on Wednesday, 1 February 2023
Rachael Maskell, the York Central MP, sent a message that was read out at the rally: “This is a day to stand up and to shout, to lead and to fight.
“For if you are not here today, you may not have a tomorrow, to tell that millionaire cabinet that you can’t make the sums up, the pay is too low and the hours too long.”
Leigh Wilks, the president of the York & District TUC, took aim at the Prime Minister and North Yorkshire MP Rishi Sunak: “Trade union members have got nothing left to lose.
“The idea that a man with an £800 million fortune can find any kind of solution to his country, would be quite laughable if it were not so preposterous.”
After the rally, the gathering marched through York, chanting: “The money is there, where’s our share?”
