Striking health workers upset at 'over-staffing'

Staff take their demands to the street outside their workplace in Pt Chevalier. Picture / Kenny Rodger

Striking mental healthcare staff say managers over-reacted when they made too many unionised nurses work through at Auckland's Mason Clinic for mentally unwell offenders last night.

Nationally (excluding Northland and Hutt Valley) about 3000 mental healthcare workers, members of the Public Service Association, went on strike for 24 hours until 7am today. Many protested outside their workplaces.

They plan a similar strike starting next Monday and an overtime ban next month.

Community services were curtailed yesterday, but district health boards say in-patient units were adequately staffed by managers, non-union workers and unionists obliged to work under the "life-preserving services" rules of the Employment Relations Act.

"It's a Clayton's strike for us," said union delegate and Mason Clinic nurse Robin Byrt. "Most of our members have to go back into the wards."

He was part of a noisy and enthusiastic roadside protest by about 70 workers near the Pt Chevalier clinic and other mental health and alcohol and drug-treatment services.

"This is a token strike for the forensic in-patient units," said Mr Byrt.

Delegate Martina Allen, who is a Waitemata District Health Board community mental healthcare nurse, said workers were disgruntled at management demands that meant some facilities, including the Mason Clinic, would have more staff than usual.

Mr Byrt said last night's shift would have had twice the normal number.

But board spokeswoman Bryony Hilless said this was an illusion because of how some unionists were used. An emergency response team would be "sitting in the tea-room" and not working unless something went wrong.

She was unaware of any strike-related difficulties at in-patient units yesterday.

The boards have offered pay rises averaging about 20 per cent, to bring mental healthcare nurses into line with the "pay jolt" won by public hospital general nurses in February.

The union has rejected an employer demand to cut the 35 per cent weekend and night-shift loading paid to some in-patient staff to a standard 15 per cent.

The boards say it would be unfair to permit the "cherry-picking" of superior provisions that exist in some areas while seeking overall national consistency.

But Waitemata in-patient staff say that if their penal rates are cut to 15 per cent, they would receive just a tiny overall pay rise.

They say the North Shore in-patient unit, Taharoto, is already under-staffed, partly because of the pay rates, and this leads to some staff working huge amounts of overtime to cover otherwise vacant shifts.

Mason Clinic nurse Bob Painter said he came from Britain three years ago. He stayed on because the lifestyle was better here, but seven other nurses who came at the same time had returned because the British pay, annual leave and other conditions were superior.

The board's manager of mental healthcare services, Dave Davies, said Taharoto was not "substantially" under-staffed and that although some British nurses had gone home, "a large group" stayed long-term.