Election 2023 editorial: Industrial action looms over the next government following countless strike threats

Striking nurses during their rally at Parliament. Photo / Mark Mitchell

EDITORIAL

Whoever is Health Minister after October 14 will hope that life doesn’t imitate art.

The strikes threatened by many of this country’s medical workers this year hit the small screen last week – with nurses at TV hospital Shortland Street forming a picket line to protest the disparity of their pay with doctors.

Lift our wages, the nurses argued, or we’ll quit for Australia, echoing a common refrain from their real-life counterparts.

Industrial action has constantly loomed over emergency departments, hospital wards and doctors’ waiting rooms since the country emerged from the worst throes of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the last six weeks alone:

• 35,000 Te Whatu Ora nurses voted to strike for 24 hours (A pay deal was struck on the week of the planned picketing and the action called off).
• 5000 senior doctors and dentists have voted to strike this Tuesday, with two more to follow if their demands aren’t met. (It’s the first time the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, who want pay rates to increase with the Consumer Price Index, have ever voted for a nationwide strike).
• Some GP doctors are mulling striking over working conditions. (A survey of GPs released to RNZ said more than 80 per cent reported being more financially worse off than last year and the majority of had needed to cut services).

With inflation still persistently high - and no quick fix for medical staff shortages in sight - industrial action (or threat of it) is nearly certain to linger for the next government.

It is by no means the only health headache those in the Beehive will need to contend with.

Reporting from the Herald’s David Fisher last week uncovered serious concerns around Te Whatu Ora’s use of contractors.

Documents released to the Fisher showed our new national health service was brought into being by a horde of contractors hired for tasks they might not have been suited to do and paid high wages they might not have earned.

Te Whatu Ora’s own internal audit found “significant deficiencies” around the new agency’s policies and procedures for hiring contractors.

No-one expected Te Whatu Ora to be an overnight success; it would be naïve to think the lumbering Titantic that is our health system can be turned around in the first year of its life.

But the audit’s findings hardly inspire confidence that the amalgamated health body is up to the task of easing the pain points in our health system.

One such pain point hit close to home for the Herald’s Pasifika editor Vaimoana Mase, who last Monday saw first hand the stretch on resources that nurses and doctors have been complaining of.

Arriving Waitakere Hospital’s emergency department at 8.30am, Mase chaperoned a relative who spent 14 hours in the waiting room.

“Rushing to ED is already stressful. But having to wait hours-on-end to be seen by a doctor, let alone treated, is another kind of stress,” she said.

Five doctors down that day, some people gave up waiting for treatment. Others, like Mase and her family member, stuck it out because they had no other choice.

Experiences like Mase’s can be eye-opening for anyone who rarely has to engage with the health system.

Most Kiwis would expect that system to to be robust enough to provide timely care if they urgently need it.

Unless that happens, it won’t just be health staff threatening to pack up for Australia (both on and off the TV screen).

More Kiwis from all walks of life will eye greener pastures in countries that can look after them when they need it most.