Community midwives say today's legal action against the Ministry of Health was a last resort after seven years of broken promises.
Dozens of midwives and supporters marched to Parliament earlier this year to protest against pay and conditions. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
This morning, the College of Midwives filed a class action in the High Court against the ministry, alleging a breach of contract.
More than 1300 midwives involved in the class action say they are fed up with broken promises to pay and support them properly.
College of Midwives chief executive Alison Eddy said when they first sought a judicial review in 2015 - alleging unjustified discrimination on the basis of sex under the Bill of Rights Act - she never thought the issues would still be unresolved seven years later.
Eddy said the last agreement committed the ministry to delivering three main things: a new contract model for community midwives that was fit for purpose, to determine fair and reasonable pay, and to explore and develop necessary support structures needed to support the community midwifery workforce.
None of those things were achieved, she said.
After years of attempting to work with the ministry and other agencies to find a resolution, they were left with no other option but to pursue class action to achieve what was needed to sustain their services, she said.
Kelly Pidgeon, a midwife in the Bay of Plenty, told RNZ she lives in Tauranga, but the area she covered was "about 100 kilometre range", which could take her about 90 minutes to drive across.
She had seen a lot of her colleagues leave the industry due to burnout and exhaustion, Pidgeon said.
Hutt Maternity Action Trust chair Meg Waghorn said the sector was in crisis.
"To be honest, it's kind of miraculous that we have any LMC [lead maternity carer] midwives least working in the community because they have been putting up with just such incredibly poor conditions," Waghorn said.
Independent midwives worked in the community rather than at the hospital and offered a wider range of birthing options and more individualised care but were hamstrung by legislation which did not allow them to charge beyond a certain rate, she said.
They were self-employed and "very limited in what they can charge", she said.
Many have moved away from practising because they could not sustain the type of work with minimal pay and poor conditions, she said.
Minister of Health Andrew Little said he understood why midwives were taking the ministry to court and that he was horrified to hear of their experiences on the front-line.