The Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety Iain Lees-Galloway and the Minister for Women Julie Anne Genter today put out a statement reaffirmed the new Government’s pre-election commitment to halting the Employment (Pay Equity and Equal Pay) Bill currently before parliament.

“While both sides of the House seemed united in lauding the TerraNova decision in favour of care and support workers and Kristine Bartlett, the previous Government immediately introduced legislation that fundamentally changed the ability of anyone else to achieve the same result,” said Lees-Galloway.

Cee Payne, industrial services manager for the New Zealand Nurses Organisation said the flawed bill had put the onus on women to prove inequity and introduced extra barriers for women to be paid fairly.

“The Bill gave no opportunity for outstanding pay equity claims to be assessed the same way as Kristine Bartlett’s was,” she said. “Nurses haven’t established the best pay equity comparison for them yet but this Bill is off the mark as nurses deserve to establish this without having to jump through hoops.”

NZNO lodged a pay equity claim for district health board nurses and other NZNO members in the recent MECA negotiations (see previous story) and it is understood that alongside a new pay deal – to be voted on later this month – a possible pathway for pursuing the claim had also been progressed.

Glenn Barclay, national secretary of the Public Service Association, agreed the bill was flawed said there was much to celebrate in the decision to “dump” it.  “It was a short-sighted and unfair bill, and congratulations to this government for recognising that,” said Barclay.

He said unions, women’s groups and their allies had campaigned for equal pay for more than a century – and forty-five years after the Equal Pay Act, it was time to finish the job.

Lees-Galloway said while both sides of the House had seemed united in lauding the TerraNova decision in favour of care and support workers and Kristine Bartlett, the previous Government immediately introduced the bill that fundamentally changed the ability of anyone else to achieve the same result.  He said the new Government would start work on new legislation built on the principles of the Joint Working Group on Pay Equity.

Genter, who is also an associate minister for health said women in New Zealand should know the new Government was committed to valuing women in the workplace and valuing vocations that that have traditionally been women’s work; “the work that provides for others” and “cares for people who need care”.

“The existing Bill aimed to apply retrospectively, which would have been unfair to the up to eight groups of women currently making pay equity claims. We will do better by all women,” said Genter.

The government press release did not mention the fate of community mental health workers who were excluded from the $2 Billion care and support care workers pay equity settlement last year. Labour election policy was to make mental health workers a priority in pay equity negotiations.

Jane MacGeorge, acting chief executive of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) said nurses are looking forward to a reversal of the 2017  ‘scrooge health budget’ and $2 billion going back into health.  (Labour’s election policy was to allocate an extra $846 million for Vote Health in the 2018-19 Budget – $293 million to “pay back National’s underfunding” and $554 million for “delivering a modern health system” – and it then planned to nearly double that amount to $1.5 billion extra for health in the 2019-20 Budget.)

Glenn Barclay and Erin Polaczuk, the national secretaries of the Public Service Association whose members include mental health and public health nurses, congratulated Labour, New Zealand First and the Greens on forming a new government. “We’re looking at an exciting new progressive partnership between three parties that have campaigned on commitments to deal with the biggest issues affecting New Zealanders,” said Barclay.

MacGeorge said health was the number one election issue and it was looking forward to a ‘funding correction’ in health funding when the new government announces its first Budget in six months time.

“The underfunding of our health services has led several DHBs to cut costs, resulting in fewer nurses being available to ensure safe staffing levels and practice and cut backs in expenditure on basic healthcare tools,” said MacGeorge.“Many nurses we have surveyed said they believe this cost-cutting is affecting the pace of recovery of their patients.

The PSA said it hoped for significant action from the new Government on issues key to its 64,000 members including: “slow wage rises and underfunding in the public sector, housing shortages and affordability issues, growing unmet need in the health system, and equal pay for women and those working in historically female-dominated industries”.

Polaczuk said the country could chose to see the “very real structural problems” in society as daunting but she was confident that the next Prime Minister had “the experience and skill to see the task ahead as an opportunity to build a better country that benefits the many, not just the few.”

MacGeorge said health underfunding “rippled across the system” impacting on the time nurses had to support new graduates, on the ability to attract and retain senior staff and to take up training opportunities. It also had a negative impact on job satisfaction and workplace relations.

“Many DHBs now report no more savings are to be found. There is no more room to cut nurse staffing numbers to save more costs. As state sector employers DHBs know they can’t continue to run their staff ragged, and not take care of their staff well-being,” MacGeorge said.

She said NZNO would present its briefing to the incoming Minister of Health in due course and also hand over the 6000 signed Shout Out for Health letters from members and the public calling for greater public investment in health care.