DHB MECA

It was a fortnight before Christmas, and the final day of voting at the DHB MECA ratification meetings. Kaiwhakahaere Kerri Nuku, chief executive Memo Musa and I were meeting new health minister David Clark for the first time.

In the chit-chat before getting down to the business on our agenda, Clark mentioned the MECA and expressed the hope it would be settled soon.

There was a pause. None of us across the table knew what the result of the vote was going to be. The response I came out with was simply: “Minister, there’s a lot of hurt out there”.

When it was announced the following day that the DHB offer had been rejected, I understood.

I understood because of all the DHB nurses, midwives and HCAs who have taken the time to tell me their stories. Some of those stories stand out.

“I’ve held onto the belief that things will get better”, one nurse said recently. “I’ve done the hard yards of ‘more with less’ in good faith that eventually the rewards would come ­– a fair salary reflective of the skills, knowledge and responsibility of my profession, sufficient support and resources to do my job safely every day.

“None of this has happened. I am tired and disillusioned that we as nurses should have to continue to fight so damned hard for such fundamental basic rights.”

“We don’t feel valued”, said another, “The effort required to work within the DHB feels so immense that we feel despondent about the longevity of our career choice.

“The sustainability of our profession weighs deeply on DHB nurses. The levels of fatigue and job dissatisfaction due to the ever increasing acuity of our patients are higher than ever. We are in DHB nursing because we love the acute health arena, but are constantly considering whether we can survive it, or how long we can sustain our efforts.”

A third told me, “DHB nurses are hurting personally and professionally. We are no longer able to keep giving extra hours to poorly staffed workplaces, as it increases our own stress and health needs and those of our families – for which we, too, have to join waiting lists for treatment.

“We must ensure there are enough staff to do the work, and fund both the wages of these staff and other health service costs, or else nurses will continue to hurt and leave this great profession.”

Three nurses, three different DHBs. The story’s the same, all over.

As I write, mediation between NZNO and DHB representatives is about to get under way. By the time you read this, the mediation process will be complete.

The outcome of mediation will be presented at NZNO member meetings between March 6 and 23.

The situation can’t be blamed on current DHB leaders or on the government of the day. It’s the result of actions by their predecessors, going back many years.

But I dearly hope that the minister and the DHBs have understood that it’s time for them to do what we do for others, every day. It’s time for them to soothe the hurt. •

(Written January 2018. First published as “The president comments” in Kai Tiaki Nursing New Zealand, February 2018. Reposted with permission)

Next week, NZNO members in DHBs around the country will start voting on a new offer from their employers. Details of the offer are available here.

It comes after members voted in May to reject the first offer, sending the NZNO and DHB negotiating teams to mediation.

It is now exactly a year since I was nominated for the NZNO negotiating team by my fellow delegates at Capital & Coast DHB. So it’s a good time to reflect on the journey to this point – both for myself, and for the 26,000 other NZNO members I have been representing.

It was a great honour, last October, when NZNO members in DHBs around the country elected me to be part of the MECA negotiating team.

And it has been an absolute privilege to work with the thousands of passionate, committed NZNO members who have propelled the negotiations to where we are today.

I have met many of you over the last three months, during my visits to Waitematā, Auckland, Counties Manukau, Waikato, Lakes, MidCentral, Wairarapa, Hutt Valley and Canterbury District Health Boards. I only wish my annual leave balance (and bank balance) had allowed me to visit the other ten DHBs, as well!

Some of you I saw at the ratification meetings in May. There, thousands of members turned out to vote overwhelmingly against the DHB offer – the highest level of participation in at least a decade.

Others I met in the workplace, where you collectively supported the “Go Purple” Days of Action, and where around 5,000 of you signed letters telling your DHB Chief Executive: “We are writing to let you know that we are standing strong for health.”

These actions we took together showed employers and government that we were growing stronger.

Now the negotiating team is recommending that members accept the new offer.

At the start of bargaining, I was asked to draft a set of Values and Principles to guide the team. Amongst other things, we agreed we would make decisions by consensus where possible, by majority where necessary, and that we’d accept collective responsibility for decisions reached.

But members who are deciding who to vote for in the NZNO elections also have a right to know what I think, personally.

Do I believe the offer recognises what nurses and healthcare workers are really worth? No, I do not. We need to keep our eyes on that prize.

If we focus only on how far we have to go before we reach that goal, however, we will probably be disappointed by any offer made this year. So we also need to look at how far we have come.

Up until February, the State Services Commission was insisting that pay increases must be no more than 0.7 percent. That unreasonable spending cap has been pushed aside. By working together, we have come a long way.

It is not my place, or my wish, to tell members to settle for too little.

But the new offer will deliver real pay rises, above inflation, and other improvements which will allow quality care. It can serve as a platform, to relaunch the journey towards our ultimate goal.

Despite the fact that member participation this year has been the highest in a decade, reaching that goal will take much greater participation, a change in economic and political circumstances, or both.

The negotiating team’s stated reasons for recommending acceptance now include the fact that “there is an improved wage offer and a reduced term”, and “progress has been made on addressing a number of outstanding matters”.

But there are other reasons, too. For me, personally, it is because our achievement is the result of your collective action as members, and this deserves to be recognised and valued.

Our MECA campaign also had great support from outside NZNO’s DHB Sector. Members in the Primary Health Care Sector showed their support.

So did other unions. “We support the decision by NZNO members to reject the offer made to them by the DHBs”, said PSA national organiser Ashok Shankar.

Even the President of the PPTA secondary teachers union, Angela Roberts, joined in our “Go Purple” Day of Action.

Where was our President?

The role of our elected leader includes being the public face of the organisation. The President’s invisibility throughout the negotiations is even more surprising, given the policy remit passed at the last AGM, that NZNO commits to supporting a new “Pay Jolt” in the upcoming DHB MECA negotiations.

“As an industrial matter, it is up to the members covered by that agreement to determine their own issues and set their own priorities”, explained the rationale attached to the remit.

“But there are also reasons why, as a matter of policy, this bargaining round will warrant a ‘whole of organisation’ commitment from NZNO.”

If you vote to elect me as your next President, I pledge to dispel the cone of silence which has engulfed our leadership. I will make your issues visible – including the issues you’ve taken action to address through the DHB MECA campaign.

And I pledge to support members whenever you join together for health. As the DHB MECA campaign has shown once again, when we take collective action we can succeed. Because together, we’re stronger.

The message is overwhelmingly clear. NZNO members working for District Health Boards all around New Zealand have rejected the offer made by their employer as part of negotiations for a new Multi-Employer Collective Agreement (MECA). Details of that offer are here.

It’s not just the overwhelming majority who voted against – over 82 percent. The message is reinforced by the sheer number of NZNO members who stopped work to attend meetings where the voting took place.

In many DHBs, it was the largest turnout at ratification meetings since the height of the nurses’ Fair Pay Campaign which achieved the first national MECA a decade ago. In some areas, such as Lakes District Health Board, it was the biggest turnout ever.

As part of the vote, members were asked to write on the back of their ballot paper the issues they want their Negotiating Team to work on and improve. NZNO staff are now busy analysing that feedback.

But over the last three weeks, I travelled to seven DHBs in order to hear member feedback first hand as well. I attended dozens of ratification meetings, in my role as a member of the NZNO Negotiating Team. And I spoke with hundreds and hundreds of NZNO members who invited me into their workplaces.

Some common themes emerged. Firstly, we don’t have the staffing to safely care for the ever-increasing number of sick people coming through our doors.

Secondly, while the Ratification Bulletin outlining the employers’ offer ran to 12 pages, full of detail, one number in particular jumps out – the 1 percent figure for a pay rise this year.

And the employers’ refusal to look at many of the small, inexpensive changes which NZNO had asked for is symptomatic of a general lack of respect for nurses, midwives and health workers working in DHBs.

The NZNO Negotiating Team have arranged to meet urgently with the employers this Thursday. We will be sure to take your collective, nationwide feedback with us.

Meetings are now under way in District Health Boards around the country for NZNO members to vote on the employers’ offer. This week, I was invited to attend six of these Ratification Meetings.

As a member of the NZNO Negotiating Team, it is enormously encouraging to see the huge number of members turning out.

Hutt Valley was the first DHB to finish its scheduled Ratification Meetings, with all of them being held between 0900 and 1630 on Tuesday.

At times, it was standing room only, as the room filled to overflowing.

Final numbers at HVDHB showed that nearly twice as many members attended this week’s meetings, compared with the MECA Endorsement Meetings held last October.

Reports from around the country tell a similar story, with big turnouts everywhere.

The Negotiating Team does believe that this offer provides some important improvements. But it has not sufficiently addressed some of your key issues as endorsed at last October’s meetings. So we are not making a recommendation to accept it.

Last October, an article I wrote for the NZNO Blog said that “Together we can win; for ourselves and our patients“. But it went on to explain:

This remains true today.

Your negotiating team has done its part. We have presented your issues and claims to the District Health Boards, and received their offer in reply. You can download the Ratification bulletin summarising the offer by clicking here.

Now it’s up to all the NZNO members covered by the DHB Multi-Employer Collective Agreement to play your part.

Meetings will be held in every DHB from 4 May to 21 May. There, members will vote on whether to accept the employers’ offer, or to reject it. Click here to see the full schedule of meetings.

It’s vital that all NZNO members working in DHBs attend a meeting, cast a vote and give the negotiating team the clear direction that we need in order to take the next steps. If you can’t get to a meeting in your usual worksite, you can attend a meeting anywhere else in the country.

This is your collective agreement so your vote really does count!