Pay equity issues and a wage deal have got mixed together in the health workers dispute and need to be separated, a senior Minister says.
Minister Megan Woods. Photo: RNZ / Dom Thomas
Around 10,000 allied health professionals are on strike today over an ongoing pay equity dispute.
The health workers include anaesthetic and laboratory technicians, dental assistants and alcohol and drug counsellors.
The industrial action has halted surgeries and clinics and comes after unhappiness last week elsewhere in the health sector when the government decided to leave nurses off its priority group on the immigration Green List.
The workers union, the Public Service Association, has described the latest pay offer as "a kick in the guts".
Senior Minister Megan Woods told Morning Report the current stalemate was disappointing, however, the pay equity issue and the pay offer have become meshed together during the current dispute.
"We need to disentangle those two things. Obviously this is a group of workers that for a very long time have been underpaid and pay equity is a separate process from the normal round of wage negotiations."
The Employment Relations Authority has made a report which has not been made public although government ministers have said they can see a resolution to the dispute through its recommendations.
Woods, who was deputising for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern who has Covid-19, said the government wanted to address a lot of the longstanding issues around pay equity in the allied health sector.
It was encouraging the DHBs to keep them in mind during their negotiations with the union.
She was confident the health system can cope with today's 24-hour strike.
"The system will cope. Obviously having health workers on strike is never a good thing but the reassurance that the Minister of Health has is that plans have been put in place for this."
Asked if negotiations should be handed over to the new agency, Health New Zealand, she said the issue was staying with the DHBs for the moment but ultimately it would need to be picked up by the new body.
"Obviously having health workers on strike is never a good thing" - Senior Minister Megan Woods
Immigration reset on nurses defended
Woods defended the government's approach to bringing in foreign nurses on its Green List announced last week.
Nurses had gone from being on a regional skills list with just one category of nurses eligible to being expanded to 13 different categories of the nursing professions and they now had "clear pathways to residency".
"What we're saying to nurses who move here, is that you're welcome, we want you to come here but we want you to work for two years in the profession..."
She said nurses could move to different jobs within that two years as along as they stayed in the profession.
Employers have been telling the government that historically some nurses had moved here but not stayed in the profession.
She denied they were being treated as a different class of citizen from doctors coming from overseas and it was not unreasonable to expect them to work in this country as a nurse for at least two years before becoming eligible for residency.
"We have to bear in mind that this is a vast improvement on the system that was in place before last week."
Some nurses have been moving on before working for two years on arrival in Aotearoa, Megan Woods says. Photo:
Speaking about the prime minister's current health, Woods said Ardern has moderate Covid-19 symptoms and is resting although she is very disappointed to miss a major week in Parliament with the Budget being delivered on Thursday.
Everything is proceeding as planned for her US trip later this month, Woods said.