Thousands of public workers in Sydney walked off their jobs on Thursday to protest the New South Wales government's wages policy.

Among those who joined the strike in front of the state Parliament were NSW teachers, police, firefighters, nurses and ferry workers. The employees of Sydney Ferry, however, walked off without notice leading to suspension of ferry services at 10 a.m.

The protesters initially gathered at the Domain and then marched to the Parliament building to express their anger and disagreement with a recent legislation that would cap salary increases at 2.5 per cent and reduced the power of the Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) to arbitrate in wage cases.

NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell denounced the mass action for being a pointless exercise.

"It's just chaos for the sake of chaos... It's inconveniencing the public pointlessly because the policy is not going to change," The Sydney Morning Herald quoted Mr O'Farrell.

He pointed out that some of the protesters were illegally participating in the mass action, particularly the ferry workers.

""It's an act of bastardry to pull ferries off... There would be people who are trying to use those ferries to get to long-standing medical appointments," the premier said.

The NSW Education Department released the list of more than 600 schools expected to be clause because of the teacher mass job walk off, despite the IRC order for the 67,000 tutors not to join the rally.

"Part of the ruling was that the Federation ... immediately contact their members and actively discourage them from taking action. Now they haven't done that, they've done the opposite actually. They've sent an SMS telling their members to ignore the IRC. The union's going out on strike today arguing for the integrity of the IRC and how much they love the IRC, yet on the day that they are defending it they are defying it. That's rather ironic to me," NSW Education Minister Adrian Piccoli told The Sydney Morning Herald.

Mr Piccoli warned teachers there will be repercussions in the future for their participation in the public strike.

In response to Mr Piccoli's statement, Gary Zadkovich, deputy president of the NSW Teacher's Federation said that people in a democratic society can exercise their right to strike, particularly if government is not using its powers properly.

"They [the government] changed the law to deny our right to an independent hearing in that very commission. Our salaries and working conditions now are going to be attacked in the next four years by the unfair use of Parliament to enact laws that deny us the same rights as any other employee in this state," Mr Zadkovich said.

Reports said that the number of strikers as of 12:25 p.m. had reached 30,000.