Above: Christchurch stopwork meeting

PHC MECA Update 30 July 2020

Kia ora koutou,

What successful union stopwork meetings!

A big thank you to all those who attended either the face-to-face or Zoom meetings. Given that these were the first ever meetings held, the turnout was fantastic. We acknowledge there were some audio and timing challenges with one of the Zoom meetings, but the goal of these, like the face-to-face meetings, was to encourage members to share their input with NZNO. In that sense, they were successful with more than 200 forms returned just from Zoom participants!

Your feedback, stories and campaign ideas are invaluable.

Strike ballot

Based on your feedback from the meetings we will be proceeding to a strike ballot of our members. This ballot will commence on Tuesday 4 August and will run for seven days. As you will appreciate, time is of the essence in order to gain a resolution and show how committed members are to achieving pay parity.

It is so disappointing we have to take this step when funders and the government should recognise they need to value their primary health care workforce.

Out of the strike options, a very clear majority have supported an eight hour strike ballot. Further, 90 percent of the feedback indicated respondents were prepared to participate in the strike action supported by the majority of their colleagues. This is very conclusive and shows these members see this as the necessary next step.

Given there are around 500 employers and 530 workplaces covered we will need to have the same time and date on the ballot. This will not fit in with all start and finish times in all workplaces. This is not logistically possible with so many employers, but should not detract from the action itself.

Once the ballot is completed and we have a vote to proceed we will then give the employers 16 days notice of the strike date and time.

At anytime during the balloting process or the strike notice period, we are able to resume negotiations if a new offer is possible, and we would hope common sense prevails from the powers that be to enable this to occur.

A further Update will come out previewing the strike ballot on Tuesday 4 August.

Petition

We have received requests for a paper version. We are working through this as an option and will provide further feedback on this.

Thank you all again for your passion, commitment and time. We're excited about what we can achieve as we move forward together.

Ngā mihi,

Chris Wilson 

Hamilton (above)

Paraparaumu (above)

Te Atatū (above)