Public sector staff make their point

Teachers and traffic wardens joined paramedics and administration staff on the streets of Mullingar yesterday morning as the town came to a standstill when hundreds of public sector trade union members joined 250,000 strikers nationwide for a 12-hour protest.Undeterred by the wind and rain the men and women who took worked in shift to voice their concerns over the possibility of further public sector tax hikes or wage cuts which may come in December's budget."Brian Cowen is a human being: he must realise what these cuts feel like for us! We can't take any more of them," said UCATT worker Eamon Ledwith who is a maintenance worker at Columb Barracks.Eamon's sentiments were echoed by the paradmedics stationed at MRH Mullingar who voiced their anger over the impending cuts and said that they had taken on a 12-hour unpaid stint to say that their pay must now be left alone."We are on emergency call out here," said IMPACT shop steward John O'Dowd. "Our colleagues in Longford have already responded to emergency calls. We will do 12 hours unpaid today because we want to say that after a 7.9 per cent drop because of the pension levies and a 2 per cent government levy, we can't take anymore.We were also supposed to get a five per cent increase because we have been training to provide drug therapies amongst other things and we haven't received that yet either.There can be no more pay cuts, we just will not accept them." Primary school teacher union INTO agreed that its members would gather at the Department of Education at Mill Road because as member Proinnsias Ó Fearghail said: "Our beef is not with the schools: it is with the government and so we decided to picket here and not at our own classrooms."Elsewhere protesters lined the streets outside St. Loman's Hospital, Mullingar Garda Station, and the schools outside Loreto College and St. Mary's CBS. There was also a small number on picket lines outside the Westmeath Vocational Education Committee offices at Marlinstown, and the TEAGASC offices in Bellview.However, some strikers were far from being very vocal, preferring to hunch together in bunches, and unwilling to pose, let alone smile for the cameras.One striker outside the VEC offices asked to pose said: "I don't want to be associated with it!".Another member tried - but unsuccessfully - to round up fellow protesters to talk to the Westmeath Examiner.