“There is just a terrible event waiting to happen. We’re just holding on by the skin of our teeth here that tragedies that are happening around the country don’t happen here.”
Roughly 36,000 members of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) went on strike nationwide on Tuesday, to protest staffing numbers and call for higher pay increases that consider the cost of living crisis.
NZNO claims any settlement with Health NZ currently will be limited to a total increase of 1%.
About 200 nurses gathered on Omahu Rd by Hawke’s Bay Hospital by 11.30am.
Health NZ deputy chief executive Northern Mark Shepherd told RNZ that New Zealand had never had more nurses on hospital floors, with 35,000 nurses across the sector and an additional 3800 new graduate nurses hired by Health NZ in the last 18 months.
“Additional nurses are on the floor,” Shepherd said.
He said there was not a hiring freeze in place.
“What we actually are doing is just reviewing the methodology that is being used because it is being used inconsistently across the organisation.
“We have been very clear with the union about that, taken them through the rationale behind that and it’s a very short improvement exercise to go through that.”
McCallan said she believed Health NZ were deliberately delaying replacing nurses who take leave or resign.
“We know for a fact that there’s not automatic replacement of vacancies.”
Shepherd told RNZ nurses’ salaries had “outperformed the broader labour market outcomes” in recent years, with pay rates for mid-career nurses rising by 28% since 2016, plus an additional 23% from the recent pay equity settlement that fixed a 20-year gender discrimination gap in the predominately female nursing workforce.
McCallan said the Government “loves to throw up this pay rise that we’ve had but it was pay equity that was long overdue”.
“What we want is something that more reflects the cost of living increases that we’ve seen and we don’t think that’s unreasonable,” McCallan said.
Shepherd told RNZ Health NZ was in the bargaining process with NZNO and is working to “determine the available funding and how it would be best to find its way into nursing salaries through different mechanisms”.
Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke’s Bay Today and spent the last 15 years working in radio and media in Auckland, London, Berlin, and Napier. He reports on all stories relevant to residents of the region, along with pieces on art, music, and culture.
