A new deal offering a 4.5 per cent pay rise spread over 36 months is to be voted on by NZNO district health board members from mid-February.
The New Zealand Nurses Organisation and the 20 District Health Boards finalised the fine wording of the deal in mid-January but the principles were agreed to on December 16 after more than ten days of negotiations.
Lesley Harry, the NZNO DHB industrial advisor, said the negotiating team would be recommending members ratify the deal that “most parts addressed most of” the union’s issues.
In October the majority of NZNO’s about 25,000 district health board members rejected a joint union settlement deal offered by the DHBs after 14 days of negotiations over three months. The major sticking points were an instant lump sum payment for the first 12 months and the timetable for rolling out safe staffing initiatives like care capacity demand management (CCDM) programmes.
That initial two year deal would have kicked off on October 1 2011 on the expiry of the NZNO’s current multi-employer collective agreement (MECA). The latest offer has a delayed start date of March 1 2012 and a three year term.
In a ratification bulletin that went out to members this week the bargaining team said the offer on the table was fairer and more equitable than the original offer.
The original offer was for a 2 per cent lump sum payment last year followed by a 2.5 per cent pay rise on October 1 2012.
The new offer drops the lump sum payment in return for a delayed start date of March 1 2012 when NZNO members would get a 2 per cent pay rise and would get two more annual pay rises equating to a 4.5 pay rise over 36 months.
The union said it believed the three year contract term would protect members from proposed legislative changes that could allow employers to opt out of collective bargaining for MECAs.
The union’s ratification bulletin also acknowledged that to develop CCDM programmes at each board required “considerable resourcing” and “significant” staff participation so consequently programmes needed to be “introduced incrementally”.
But that the DHBs’ goal was to have most DHBS on the programme by end of 2013 and a range of other recommendations were made to progress safe staffing health workplace initiatives.
A number of other issues were to be reviewed by the National Bipartite Action Group (BAG) including issues around discretionary sick leave and reported difficulties with taking time off to complete professional development requirements.
Harry said the multi-union managed bargaining talks with the DHBs had laid down the framework for NZNO’s issue-based bargaining that had got underway on November 23. She said the talks had to basically start from scratch to work through the detail of the issues raised by both parties.
“It was time-consuming but we think it was useful and constructive…it wasn’t adversarial.”
She said members voting at ratification meetings, beginning around the country on February 14, would decide whether the latest offer was acceptable.
KEY POINTS
Current MECA expired Sept 30 2011
New MECA has 36 month term starting March 1 2012
2 percent pay rise from March 1 2012
1.5 per cent pay rise from March 1 2013
1 per cent pay rise from March 1 2014
DHBs set goal of having ‘most’ DHBs on Care Capacity Demand Management programme by end of 2013
