Pay talks for district health board nurses reached crunch time, with boards putting their final offer on the table as Nursing Review went to press.
The joint unions were now to take the early September offer back to members for ratification meetings being held in late September.
There was some last minute to-ing and fro-ing after unions rejected the board’s initial counter offers to the joint bargaining claims. The talks began back in July with unions sent a strong message that tight budgets meant any money in the boards’ coffers was already tagged and targeted.
Glenda Alexander, industrial advisor for the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO), said they now had the boards’ final offer, which the 10 unions would take to their members for consideration. “It is crunch time,” she said.
Alexander said she was lead advocate for the 10 unions involved in the “alternative bargaining” approach – NZNO being the largest with 28,000 registered nurse, enrolled nurse, midwife and health care assistant members.
The parties had been bargaining since 7 July and had 14 days of talks leading up to the final offer on 6 September. Alexander, speaking to Nursing Review just prior to the final offer being laid on the table, said employers had been keen for previous offers to be taken out to members for ratification. “We said the offers to date weren’t recommendable… we wouldn’t be able to recommend them positively.”
She said when it came to pay offers there were different responses within unions, with NZNO having some member groups wary of the one-off lump sum payments often favoured by DHBs.
The crunch time would be once the unions took the DHBs final offer to members for ratification and how the members of the three largest parties, the NZNO, PSA and Service and Food Workers Union (SWFU), would vote.
“If one of the three main unions rejected the offer, then (combined) bargaining is deemed to be concluded because clearly we’re not agreeing with each other,” Alexander said prior to receiving the final offer. “But if all three reject it (the offer)… then it means the ball is still alive.”
Ashok Shankar, national organiser for DHB members of the Public Service Association, said prior to the 5 September meeting that negotiations were still up in the air as it waited for employers to come back with their latest response to the union claims made earlier in August.
The PSA had set down ratification meetings for its 16,000 members (4000 mostly mental health and public health nurses) for September 19 and 20. “At the end of the day if we can’t get a combined deal one of the options will be going to back to negotiating MECA by MECA,” Shankar said prior to receiving the final offer. The district health boards’ negotiating spokesperson was unable to comment at time of going to press.
The NZNO multi-employment collective agreement (MECA) is due to expire at the end of September and the PSA MECA in April 2012.
*Watch out for further updates online at www.nursingreview.co.nz as more details are released.
