Teachers, corrections officers, firies, nurses, and electricity generation staff will take industrial action on Thursday, including marches in Darwin, Alice Springs and Katherine, to protest the government’s latest wage offer, Unions NT have said.

Secretary Erina Early said workers would be taking to the streets in the major centres to rally against the two per cent compounding pay rise offer, which was put by Chief Minister Natasha Fyles in early October, after she made the surprise announcement to scrap a four-year public service wage freeze.

Ms Early said correctional officers would be undertaking a 12-hour work stoppage, teachers a four-hour work stoppage, while nurses and firies would be undertaking protected action, and Power and Water and Territory Generation employees would undertake work stoppages and other unspecified action.

The wage freeze policy had already been accepted by members of the CPSU but had been the biggest point of contention for ongoing EBA negotiations with teachers, nurses, police, fire fighters, corrections officers and other workers.

The pay freeze policy was brought in by former chief minister Michael Gunner who said the policy – which offered public servants $4,000 in the first year of the freeze, with $2,000 extra per year for the following three years instead of pay rises – would save the Northern Territory $424 million over four years.

“Public sector union members smashed the wage freeze, now we are dealing with a wage offer of two per cent or each year of the enterprise agreements,” Ms Early said.

“We feel like we are going around and around on roller coaster, with the government hoping the workers fall off and give up.

“This will not happen and Thursday’s day of action is to demonstrate to the government, your workers are angry and fed up with the constant lack of support and the government’s shameful wages position. Territorian public service workers deserve better.”

Teachers, firefighters, nurses, correctional officers and other workers held a “NT Public Sector Day of Action” on September 1, to protest the government’s pay freeze. There has been other industrial action by those groups this year as well.

At the time of announcing the wage freeze scrapping a month later, Ms Fyles said the economic situation had changed significantly, with interest rate rises and higher than normal inflation.

“The Northern Territory Government is working to reduce the cost of living for Territorians through a number of incentives and schemes,” she said in a statement.

Ms Fyles said the current Budget forecasts a net operating deficit of $253 million this financial year, but said that was an improvement of $283 million “compared to the position forecasted in last year’s Budget and in aggregate is forecast to improve by nearly $1.4 billion over the four years”.