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Nurses have resoundingly rejected a district health board pay offer of a 1% pay offer now and 2% in following years, says the New Zealand Nurses Organisation.

Around 26,000 nurses, midwives and health care assistants around the country have been meeting and voting on the deal over the past two weeks in 'better than normal' turnouts, said NZNO industrial advisor Lesley Harry.

She said feedback from the meetings showed that the pay offer was a major factor in the deal being "overwhelmingly" rejected but other issues were also raised including access to discretionary leave.

NZNO negotiators and the negotiating team for the 20 DHBs were to return to the negotiating table on Thursday (May 28) to discuss the rejected deal.

A spokesperson for the DHBs' negotiating team said he could not comment beyond to say that the DHBs team would listen on the 28^th to why the deal was rejected and 'take it from there' 

Harry said NZNO's members had made it very clear that the DHBs needed to step up and "propose a fair deal" and it was hoping for an improved offer.

She said negotiators had expected a 'no' vote but thought it would be close and hadn't expected such a strong vote.  She would not release details of turnouts to the series of rolling ratification meetings but said turnout was above 50 per cent of members at some, but not all, DHBs.

The DHBs spokesperson said there were potentially more dates set down for negotiations in June.

Harry said NZNO would try its best for an improved offer but if that was not possible the next required step would be to try and reach settlement of a new multi-employer collective agreement (MECA) through mediation. 

She said NZNO was anticipating setting up a new series of meetings for members soon to discuss the outcomes of Thursdays meeting and further strategies might include the consideration of industrial action.  "But we're not at that point quite yet."

The current MECA contract expired on March 1 this year and preliminary negotiations in the current MECA round got underway late last year.