The Minister of Health, district health boards (DHBs), and the Nurses Organisation all agree that if pay equity is settled then strike action could be avoided.
Hundreds of nurses and supporters took to the streets in Auckland last month to demand better pay and conditions. Photo: RNZ / Nick Munro
Nurses are set to resume strike action over three months at public hospitals throughout the country in a bid for better pay and conditions.
Last month, 30,000 nurses walked off the wards in hospitals when negotiations with their DHB employers broke down.
During collective agreement negotiations in 2017-2018, the nurses union and DHBs agreed to work on a pay equity settlement.
Nurses Organisation (NZNO) spokesperson Glenda Alexander told Morning Report this was at the centre of their claims.
"Because that would be the real set of putting in place what indeed the rate should be instead of the game that's played through the bargaining content.
"But it's also more than two years that we've been working on the pay equity claim and it seems to us there's been delays in that process that had that been sped up, we would be in a different situation than we are now."
"They've had more than two years to do it" - Nurses Organisation spokesperson Glenda Alexander
Minister of Health Andrew Little told Morning Report the maximum effort should be on the pay equity settlement, and he had requested officials to accelerate that work.
"With all due respect to the Nurses Organisation, it hasn't helped that we had the pay equity process going down one stream with tenable work required there, and then the standard collective bargaining process, where the claim reflected what they are expecting out of the pay equity process, so we've actually had two streams going on trying to deal with the same issue.
"In the mediation that was convened last week, and that will resume next week, the Nurses Organisation representatives are still focused on the collective bargaining and the claim that was being dealt with six weeks ago.
"I think people are right to ask how it has taken three years, we can forgive a period of delay because of Covid, but nevertheless three years is a long time to get this pinned down.
"It takes two to tango, there are two negotiating parties here."
"Three years is a long time to get this pinned down" - Minister of Health Andrew Little
Little acknowledged nurses on the job were frustrated and stressed and said that was why he had asked for the settlement process to be accelerated.
Tairāwhiti DHB chief executive Jim Green, who is also spokesperson for all DHBs, said they had completed initial work around a pay equity claim, and agreed nurses were under-valued.
"There's a process around settling a pay equity claim, we were very well established in doing that. Unfortunately, last year as you all know things got a bit delayed in working on that," Green told Morning Report.
"We believe there could be a settlement on that in the very near future."
He said he hoped they could avoid the upcoming strike action by doing further work on a settlement with the union.
How much will nurses get?
The pay equity process will assess the skills and responsibilities of nurses at various levels of expertise, compare that to the non-female dominated workforces, and quantify the extent of sex discrimination against nurses.
Minister of Health Andrew Little. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Little said they were at the last stage of putting a dollar figure on the settlement.
A 17 percent pay rise would reflect the value of nurses' work, NZNO spokesperson Glenda Alexander said.
Little could not say how much was on the line, but said it could be anywhere between 10 - 20 percent.
A settlement would still have to go through negotiation and ratification processes, he said.
"There's never a single answer to this, so you do have to give the parties an opportunity to talk about it and tease out the issues on the margins and ... [it] requires negotiation between with the parties so there is agreement because it then has to be ratified by the workforce."
Last year, the Equal Pay Amendment Bill was passed into law, providing a process for sectors with a female-dominated workforce to negotiate for pay rises in line with what men are paid in comparable male-dominated workforces.
However, that did not quite apply to the nurses because their 2018 agreement on pay equity predated the law, Little said.