The New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) has quit a “historic” $520 million pay-equity settlement, challenging whether backdated pay meets the conditions of its last collective agreement.
Heading into the long Easter weekend, health minister Andrew Little said the union – made up of more than 55,000 nurses and health workers – won’t vote on the settlement next week as agreed with the district health boards in December.
The NZNO and the Public Service Association have been trying to iron out the details of the historic 2018 settlement to lift pay in female-dominated industries.
“There is a binding agreement in place between the parties and it should be honoured,” Little said in a statement, noting he’d been told of the union’s decision on Wednesday night.
He said it was the most significant pay-equity settlement in history and, if accepted by the nurses and healthcare workers covered by the agreement, would lift their pay by "a considerable margin".
'Pay nurses properly'
Cabinet had released the money and the government was ready to “pay nurses properly”, but that funding had limits, he said.
“We must manage many demands while keeping a lid on debt.”
Earlier this week, NZNO chief executive Paul Goulter said his members showed “significant dissatisfaction” about backpay and he planned to see a full legal review of the settlement as to whether it met conditions in the last multi-employer collective agreement.
Goulter said discussions with the DHBs – which preceded his time as CEO – were “protracted and difficult”, with negotiating members of the NZNO and PSA seeing the deal “as a way of settling negotiations and getting much-improved base pay rates to members”.
Little urged all parties to act in good faith and honour commitments they’d made to resolve the escalated dispute as soon as possible.
