The protest will run from 9am until the start of the meeting at 9.30am, tomorrow Friday 20 April 2018, in Donegall Square outside Belfast City Hall. There will be an opportunity for photos and interviews with officials and members.
 
Usdaw has urged Belfast City Council to step away from their plans to extend Sunday trading hours and engage in a ‘weekend summit’ that would take a detailed look at what the city has to offer residents, visitors and tourists over the whole of the weekend.
 
Leading the protest is Mike Aylward – Usdaw Divisional officer who says: “Belfast City Council ran this consultation again, only a year after the last one, because they want to see whether attitudes have changed towards their proposal. The answer is yes, attitudes have changed with more than double the responses and a majority opposed to extended Sunday trading.
 
“We do not believe longer Sunday trading hours is the answer and we have made it clear that we were more than willing to work alongside Belfast City Council and other interested parties to explore options that would deliver a real and meaningful boost to the weekend economy of Belfast. That is a reasonable and measured response.
 
“Our members remain absolutely opposed to extended Sunday trading. The current Sunday trading arrangements are a fair compromise, which has worked well for over 20 years, and gives everyone a little bit of what they want. Retailers can trade, customers can shop, staff can work; whilst Sunday remains a special day, different to other days, and shopworkers can spend some time with their family.”
 
Results of Usdaw's Survey of Members: In March 2018 Usdaw repeated a survey (originally conducted in November 2016) of a representative group of 885 of our members working in retail in Northern Ireland. The results of this survey clearly demonstrate the strength of feeling of Usdaw members, and retail workers, on this subject:

• 94% of respondents thought that shops should not open longer on Sundays (an increase of 9 percentage points since the 2016 survey).
• 80% of respondents currently work at least some Sundays whilst over a quarter work every Sunday.
• Almost two thirds of respondents said that they already come under pressure to work on Sundays.
• Over half of respondents have some form of caring responsibilities, either for children or sick or elderly relatives of these, over three quarters work some Sundays already and over two-thirds are under pressure to work on Sundays. 49% find it difficult to arrange suitable alternative care whilst they are at work.

Notes for editors:
 
Usdaw (Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers) is the UK's fifth biggest and the fastest growing trade union with over 430,000 members. Membership has increased by more than 28% over the decade. Most Usdaw members work in the retail sector, but the union also has many members in transport, distribution, food manufacturing, chemicals and other trades.
 
For Usdaw press releases visit: http://www.usdaw.org.uk/news and you can follow us on Twitter @UsdawUnion