Why we should be glad nurses have settled with the DHBs

Tuesday, 2 November 2021

Striking nurses march to Parliament in June.

OPINION: On October 15, nurses voted to accept the latest offer in their multi-employer collective agreement (MECA) negotiations with the district health boards. Voter turnout was high, and a resounding 83 per cent voted in favour.

That was good news for burnt-out nurses, but it’s also very welcome news for the people of Aotearoa New Zealand, who are facing a worrying future with Covid-19 firmly ensconced in our communities.

We didn’t get everything we asked for, but we did get some sound gains around the important matters of pay and safe staffing. Significant pay increases came through advances on our pay equity claim, a good portion of which will be applied to base rates.

In terms of safe staffing, we now have a legally binding pathway where DHBs will be forced to address staffing shortages whenever they put patients at risk. Until now, reports and complaints by nurses, worried about the wellbeing of those in their care, have largely been ignored, and this has been hugely demoralising and frustrating.

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In fact, it was lack of accountability around safe staffing, not more money, that led most of our members to reject previous offers from the DHBs. And it was the daily reality of being worked to the bone in understaffed wards that caused so many nurses to leave for overseas or just to get out of the profession. And, of course, the more who leave, the harder it becomes for those remaining to do their jobs safely and well.

We currently have a heavily depleted nursing workforce and that is a genuine worry for a country on the verge of a Covid surge. The experts warn it’s inevitable, the Government is clearly preparing for it, but our intensive care nurses say they already can’t cope with the extra demands the virus is currently placing on the health system.

Glenda Alexander: “The pay has been poor and the vicious cycle of understaffing, causing more staff to leave, has been left unchecked.”

The truth is that without an adequate nursing workforce, high numbers of patients with Covid will not get adequate care, and some non-Covid patients will get little or no attention. Elective surgeries will be postponed indefinitely, and routine care will be rationed.

We are currently walking this knife-edge because nursing has become an increasingly unattractive profession. The pay has been poor and the vicious cycle of understaffing, causing more staff to leave, has been left unchecked.

Nurses are highly trained professionals, but many of them report going home each day completely demoralised because they have not been able to care adequately for their patients. We now have experienced nurses routinely discouraging their children and others from joining the profession.

The good news, however, is that the latest offer we accepted does begin to address the issues that are making nurses so intensely unhappy. Pay equity will put us on a salary par with our male counterparts in other professions and lift wages dramatically. DHBs being forced to address staffing shortages without delay should see a reduction in burn-out and poor patient care.

As a union we will now be working to extend the benefits won for DHB nurses to all nurses in New Zealand, regardless of where they work. All nursing staff are critical to our Covid response and all are of equal value, but those working in primary care (eg at your medical centre), and those in Māori and iwi providers, remain woefully underpaid.

When these changes properly kick in across the sectors, the hope is that nursing will not be seen as soul-destroying hard work for little return. Young people will be more inclined to begin nursing training, and we may even attract some nurses back to the profession, or back from overseas.

It’s probably too late for any Covid surge that’s just around the corner, but in the long term it gives us hope, especially if we can build on these gains in further negotiations.

I want to close by thanking the people of Aotearoa New Zealand. We sensed you were with us, and that gave us courage. Your many words, letters and acts of support gave us confidence that we were doing the right thing in sticking to our guns. We did that for you, and that you understood that made all the difference.

CORRECTION: The headline of this opinion piece has been updated to clarify that it is only nurses employed by DHBs who have settled at this stage. (Amended: 9.24am, Nov 3 2021)