Hospitals get ready for strikes despite climbdown by nurses

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

Contingency planning is continuing against two possible strikes by nurses in five North Island health districts, despite a union agreement to cancel a 24-hour stopwork on June 4.

The Nurses Organisation agreed late on Friday to abandon the first of three threatened strikes as a gesture of "good faith" to allow mediated pay negotiations to continue in Hamilton today, after three days of talks last week.

But notices remain of an eight-hour strike on June 10 by about 4000 nurses from Northland to Gisborne, excluding Auckland, and a 16-hour stopwork two days after that in case there is no settlement this week.

Some complex operations with long recovery times such as heart surgery were cancelled as early as last week at Waikato Hospital, one of 19 in the line of fire of the strike notices.

Hospitals in Auckland and other main centres have been asked to look at fitting emergency cases from the regions into their wards if necessary during the strikes, even if this means having to cancel non-urgent operations to make room.

Although pressure has eased with the cancellation of the first strike, more operations may have to be postponed this week by the five boards embroiled in the dispute.

Strike notices were issued after nurses rejected a pay rise offer which the boards put at between 7 per cent and 9.67 per cent but which the union says includes normal grade rises and would still leave members 3.2 per cent to 8 per cent behind their Auckland counterparts.