Almost 2,000 SIPTU members in the NAS voted overwhelmingly last week for strike action relating to a dispute over updated salary scales within the service.

Trade Union Unite said despite the fact that the review recommended enhanced pay scales to reflect these changes, those pay adjustments have not been.

Unite union members began an eight-day walk out at the Diageo packaging plant in east Belfast on Friday.

The workers say the industrial action is a result of an inadequate pay offer from management, as they seek a pay deal to end a pay gap with workers at other Diageo sites.

Pat Fitzgerald, a former Waterford Crystal worker who was a widower aged in his 70s, was found in a house in St Catherine’s Grange Housing Estate last Friday.

A statutory maximum working temperature is among extreme-weather proposals being put forward by an Irish union.

In response to the unions' release, the HSE said that Bernard Gloster has asked the HSE's National Employee Relations Service to request the Work Relations Commission to intervene in the threatened industrial action.

Unite said withholding pay when employees are unable to work could be considered an unauthorised deduction from wages, and therefore unlawful.

Siptu and Fórsa agreed pay rises of 12 per cent with Aer Lingus in recent years, but the deals include a clause where they can go back to the airline if another group of workers secures a better deal

The first walkout in the dispute over pay will take place on Thursday February 1.

Public sector workers are taking part in walk-outs in a dispute over a pay award.

The walkouts are expected to be the largest strike in the North in recent history