Nurses outside Auckland to strike over parity

By JO-MARIE BROWN

About 4000 nurses at 17 public hospitals in the upper North Island are preparing to go on strike next month because they are not being paid as much as their Auckland counterparts.

Nurses working for the Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Tairawhiti, Lakes and Northland District Health Boards said yesterday they had rejected an employer offer. The vote for industrial action was 94 per cent.

The Nurses Organisation, which has been negotiating a new multi-employer collective agreement for the nurses over the past year, will today notify the five boards of plans to strike during the first two weeks of June.

Members of the organisation wanted pay parity with Auckland nurses because they did the same job with the same level of Government funding, said spokesman Shane Vugler.

"Nurses in this region have made it clear that they will not just sit tight while their pay lags behind other professionals in New Zealand and other nurses around the world.

"Catching up with Auckland would be a reasonable first step towards closing that gap."

Auckland's nurses earn between $32,500 and $49,000 a year excluding overtime.

Mr Vugler said the employers' offer would leave most of the regional nurses 3.2 per cent to 8 per cent behind those rates.

"Auckland nurses have never been paid a cost-of-living allowance ... so we don't accept an argument that nurses in our region should be paid less because individuals choose to live and work in Auckland," he said.

Cathy Cooney, a spokeswoman for the five boards, said the strike threat could derail the excellent progress made in the negotiations.

"Our offer closes the gap considerably but, as the Minister of Finance made clear in his Budget speech, [boards] have to meet wage and salary increases within current forecast incomes.

"The [boards] have made their best offer within funding constraints. Auckland rates are just not affordable."