Mental health workers plan 24-hour strikes and bans on overtime

About 3000 mental healthcare workers plan to strike for 24 hours from 7am on Monday, after talks last night failed to break their pay dispute with district health boards.

The Public Service Association members, mostly nurses, also intend to strike the following Monday and to ban overtime next month. The strikes affect all health boards except Northland and Hutt Valley.

The action will mean only skeleton staff in some services and the deferral of certain patient appointments, but the union will provide some staff during the strike.

The Waitemata District Health Board's general manager of mental healthcare services, Dave Davies, said he was confident services would remain safe for patients and the community in the Auckland region.

Health boards in other regions had made similar arrangements.

The union and boards aim to negotiate four regional deals to replace board-by-board agreements.

The boards have offered phased pay rises averaging about 20 per cent in a two-year deal - although the amounts vary greatly - which is similar to the pay "jolt" accepted by public hospital general nurses in February.

The base salary of a Waitemata inpatient nurse, now $44,538, would rise to $54,000 under the offer.

The union said the dispute centred on the boards' refusal to continue the pay margin enjoyed by community mental healthcare nurses, the employers' bid to cut back the higher penal rates paid in some areas, and their wish to shift some on to the new rates more slowly than general nurses.

Union national secretary Richard Wagstaff said that after the failure of mediation yesterday, which followed months of talks, members felt they had no option but to strike.

The health boards said the union needed "a dose of realism".

Spokesman Jim Green said the union could not expect to have national consistency and then cherry-pick extras such as the higher penal rates.