About Us
The Belfast & District Trades Union Council is made up of trade union activists living in and around the Belfast area, who join together to promote and implement the policies of the trade union movement in the local community and with local authorities.
The B&DTUC also provide support and assistance for workers in dispute, including the Belfast Postal workers, college lecturers, Irish ferries staff, and Joanne Delaney the Dunnes Stores worker in Dublin who was reinstated following an Island wide solidarity action in response to her dismissal for wearing her union badge.
We have been campaigning, at times with other Trades Union Councils, against the privatisation of the water services, additional water charges, cuts in the education budgets, massive hikes in the fuel and rates bills, continuing high levels of poverty, tuition fees, privatisation and undermining of public services and the destruction of manufacturing industry. As part of this work we have been calling for the immediate restoration of accountable government through the Assembly and Executive so that we can halt the policies of direct rule ministers that will cause a dramatic increase in our cost of living, and in defence of our public services.
The B&DTUC continue to be engaged in anti-sectarian and anti-racism initiatives and we were instrumental in establishing a migrant workers advice office in the Belfast Unemployed Resource Centre.
Alongside our international solidarity work the B&DTUC are involved in a project to commemorate the contribution of the Irish International Brigadistas who came from both sections of our community to fight against Fascism in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). By promoting this aspect of our ‘Common History’ we hope that, in some small way, it will help in the breaking down of the barriers of intolerance and mistrust dividing our community.