Crowds have converged on St Peter’s Square in Manchester City Centre in protest protest against plans to change the law on strikes.
The changes which have gone through Parliament this week would involve minimum service levels in certain sectors, with no automatic protection from unfair dismissal for workers who strike when told to work.
Protesters heard speeches from local Trade Union leaders before marching around the City Centre
Wednesday February 1st is being called strike Wednesday with teachers,rail workers,civil servants and University Staff all taking action in what is being billed as the biggest day of industrial action in a decade
Schools across Greater Manchester will be hit by strike action by the National Education Union with many closed or just opening for vulnerable children and those taking exams this year
The NEU says today is a historic day and one of the biggest strikes in history with 300,000 teachers striking over 24,000 schools.
Rail Commuters will be left stranded across the region as both Northern and Transpennine Express are hit by action from both the RMT union and the drivers Union ASLEF with a second strike planned for Friday.
The walkouts mean there will not even be reduced services operating for passengers left weary by months of strike action.
Meanwhile Thousands of staff at 150 universities across the UK are taking industrial action and about 100,000 civil servants in 124 government departments and other bodies are on strike in a dispute over pay and conditions
Paul Nowak, General Secretary of the TUC, has told BBC Breakfast that he doesn’t think the Government is ‘serious’ about negotiations and urged the Prime Minister and the Chancellor to get round the table and talk sensibly about improving the pay of public servants’
Education Secretary Gillian Keegan told the same show that the Government’s priority is to tackle inflation as thousands of teachers in England and Wales take strike action
Steve Reed, the shadow justice secretary, claimed the Government had not done enough to avert teaching strikes.
The Labour frontbencher told Sky News: “No one wants to see these strikes happening. Absolutely not. Not the teachers, not the kids themselves, but importantly nor do the teachers.
“The Government has known that there were risks of strikes since last summer and the Government at no point sat down with the unions to try and look at the space for a compromise that could have avoided these strikes.
“It is quite staggering that in the time since then we have had five different secretaries of state for education.”
