A rescue deal for Taihape’s health services - involving a six per cent pay cut for Taihape nurses and allied health staff - is to be voted on this Friday.
Otaihape Health Ltd – the financially troubled trust which runs Taihape’s public health care – had asked about 20 nursing staff to cut back their pay to aged care sector rates to help keep the service solvent.
But after a line-by-line expenditure review a compromise was negotiated between the New Zealand Nurses Organisation and the trust for all staff over a certain pay threshold to take a lesser pay cut.
Trust chair Jock Stratton said it had reached an agreement that reduced the hourly rates of some staff and it was now waiting on the outcome of the Whanganui District Health Board meeting this Friday.
Stratton said not only was the DHB, which pulled out of offering services to the community in 2007, the trust’s major funder but the trust also had a rental agreement with the board over Taihape’s purpose-built inpatient facility.
Rob Haultain, New Zealand Nurses’ Organisation industrial advisor said the initial trust proposal would have equated to a 30 per cent cut in take-home pay for the inpatient facility nurses who provided not only rest home and aged care hospital care but a range of primary, maternity and emergency care as well.
Haultain said while the union delegates were not prepared to accept the initial proposal they found the risk of the service going into liquidation unpalatable and unfair to the Taihape community. So union staff agreed to an across the board base pay reduction of 6 per cent for union members – but only for the about two-thirds of staff earning over $18 an hour which included nurses, allied health and other staff - as delegates didn’t want the lowest paid staff members to be affected.
“I don’t think I’ve ever worked with a more mature and pragmatic group of delegates,” Haultan said. She said the service’s manager had also volunteered to take the six per cent pay cut which was also an unprecedented move in her 24 years working in the union movement.
Haultain believed the two major causes for the trust’s large debt were the paper liability for the high annual rent bill to the DHB and payments to executive directors acting as consultants to the trust.
Her advice to other small rural communities asked by district health boards to take over providing local health services was to ensure they get a commitment from the board for good management support – particularly financial management.
