INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS/FIONA CASSIE
Nurses are voting this month on whether to back the first national multi-union wage talks in two decades.
The proposal is being mooted as an alternative in the current tight funding climate to potentially protracted negotiations between district health boards and individual unions.
A combined approach has also been billed as potentially more effective in getting a pay offer for about 45,000 public health sector workers who are members of the three unions involved.
Glenda Alexander, industrial advisor for the New Zealand Nurses Organisation, said the organisation would ask its DHB members in early February if they endorsed the organisation taking part in the alternative national bargaining approach. The union’s current multi-employment collective agreement (MECA) with DHBs is due to expire at the end of March.
Public Service Association organiser Ashok Shankar said it would also meet shortly with its mental health and public health nurse members as well as with allied health and clerical staff members, to suggest they “seriously consider” the approach. The third union involved – the Service and Food Workers Union (SWFU) – is to put the same option to its members.
Shankar said at present public health sector bargaining was “zero bargaining” as current small scale negotiations with DHBs were bearing no results at all. This followed Finance Minister Bill English signalling last year that there would be “restrained funding” for public sector pay settlements. Shankar said the hope was that by consolidating public health sector pay talks the parties could reach a breakthrough.
Alexander said the NZNO would present members with its analysis of the risks and opportunities offered by the alternative approach. But she echoed Shankar in saying that in the current economic climate, members had to ask whether they wanted to enter individual talks that could, based on the outcomes of recent negotiations, be protracted and non-productive.
The unions hoped that the efficiencies and economies of scale of having combined national talks could be beneficial to all parties and also free up funding for a national settlement.
If the approach was endorsed by DHBs and union members, national talks would be held in March to come up with a national terms of settlement (NTOS) offer involving a common pay settlement offer, a common expiry date and a process for resolving outstanding union-specific issues.
The plan was that the parties would have an offer ready to go to unions and boards for ratification by late March. Alexander said each union would have its own ratification process so members were not tied to accepting the settlement offer.
“So there is not a lot to be lost but potentially a lot to be gained,” Alexander said.
The proposed bargaining approach grew out of the Health Sector Relationship Agreement established several years ago to promote better relationships between the government (minister and Ministry of Health), the DHBs and the CTU (Council of Trade Unions) affiliated health sector unions.
A project team, including Shankar, Alexander and several DHBNZ representatives, came up with the approach while investigating how to improve public health sector bargaining.
A District Health Boards New Zealand spokesperson was unavailable for comment before Nursing Review went to print.
The NZNO represents about 25,000 DHB nurses, midwives and health care assistants while the PSA represents just under 3000 nurses plus a further 9000 allied health staff and about 5000 health clerical staff. Potentially the combined bargaining approach could be extended to cover other CTU affiliated unions like ASMS (Association of Salaried Medical Specialists) and midwifery union MERAS.
