Kia ora koutou katoa,

As you were aware, negotiations continued on 28/29 January. While we made some progress on other matters, the major issue remains the pay parity gap for experienced nurses with the DHB MECA. (as reported previously this is currently a 7.6 percent gap and will be 10.6 percent from 1 May 2020) and the clear additional funding that is required for this.

Some NZNO members have supported the campaign action of emailing the Deputy Director General with their stories of why pay parity is essential. See our last update for more.

In an absolute first,  PHC MECA employers have also been individually emailing the Ministry of Health.

Your support in our Campaign Action is so important!

We need many more members to support our campaign action by directly emailing the Deputy Director General of Health Keriana Brooking (keriana.brooking@health.govt.nz) ASAP so she gains an appreciation of the passion you have for being appropriately recognised and for pay parity to be delivered pronto.

Please don’t forget to copy your email to Ms Brooking to campaigns@nzno.org.nz so we can keep a track of participation levels for further media comment.

It is so important that you individually participate in this campaign, make it real and briefly share your stories at this point. Clearly more government funding is needed to achieve a resolution.

Please tell her how the lower wages you receive (because of the lack of funding) affect your life, the importance and cost effectiveness of the quality primary health care service that you deliver every day, and why nurses need to be retained and recruited in PHC to continue to deliver a quality service.

Here are some comments from members in the recent survey:

• “I am tempted to leave PHC to be in a better remunerated job, but then my passion is PHC – it’s very frustrating.”
• “This is my community and I care about it.”
• “My direct nursing care has kept people in their own homes rather than be admitted to hospital. Our continued hard work in times of disease outbreaks such as the measles has a very direct impact on our communities.”
• “Community and primary health is essential in keeping people out of hospital and keeping well in the community. This in turn will save money in the long run.”
• “I am an emergency nurse, educator, vaccinator, mental health nurse, paediatric nurse, surgical nurse, older persons nurse each and every day for my community. I am the contact for the community and      am trusted and respected.”
• “We are finding it increasingly more difficult to recruit and keep nurses in primary care."
• "I feel undervalued and unseen."
• "Our skill reduced the number of hospital admissions."
• "The health care and education we provide not only improves health outcomes for individuals, but also for communities."
• "We are the glue that holds the health system together. We connect many different services together."
• "All up it ‘just doesn’t compute’ when there is a greater emphasis being put on keeping people well in their community."

Further media coverage

Please see below from General Practice NZ – unprecedented public support

GPNZ supports nurse pay parity call
New Zealand Doctor, 31 January 2020
Dr Jeff Lowe – Chair of GPNZ notes, “We continue to advocate towards pay equity for our nurse teams and acknowledge the sustained efforts of NZMA and NZNO in supporting our nursing workforce and the sustainability of General Practice.”

Where to next

We have strategically re-scheduled the 11/12 February negotiations to 24/25 February to maximise the opportunity for further collaborative NZNO/employer lobbying and meeting with key stakeholders in relation to the additional funding.

Next steps include making contact with the Chief Nurse and the DHB Chief Executive Lead for Primary Health.

Further, your negotiation team has advised the employers we need an acceptable wage offer presented on 24/25 February.

We will keep you up-to-date on progress.
 
Ngā mihi,
 
Chris Wilson and Mike Yeats
on behalf of your PHC MECA Negotiation Team