The Nurses Organisation union (NZNO) has agreed to consider the government's pay offer and lifted a two-day strike notice.
Photo: RNZ / Dom Thomas
Nurses had voted to participate in two 24-hour strikes - on 29 August and 9 September - and another eight-hour strike on 19 August.
They had held an eight-hour strike early last month before returning to negotiations with district health boards over pay and conditions.
An agreement to take the offer to members was announced this afternoon and the August strike notice has been lifted. The other two may still go ahead if the offer is not accepted.
Health Minister Andrew Little said he would not go into full detail but it was an improved pay offer with two pay components.
"One is a standard cost of living adjustment you'd expect that is within the public sector pay guidelines issued earlier this year. There is a second element which is really to address that the pay equity claim lodged three years ago simply hasn't made sufficient progress so there is effectively an advance payment on that."
He said the offer's value would run to $408m over 27 months.
"The elements of the pay deal going out to nurses today relating to pay equity will be deducted from whatever the future deal is, but it means we can actually seriously get on and work out what that gap is, fill that gap, get their pay to an acceptable standard.
"Then we can focus on the stuff that really matters which is our health system as a whole doing a great job for the patients who need it."
He said there was also commitments to:
- Conduct a ministerial review of the safe staffing accord
- Review inconsistent rollout of care capacity demand management
- Run a joint recruitment campaign between the ministry and NZNO
Some 1450 nursing positions remained vacant across the DHBs, he said.
"So many shifts routinely understaffed all the time because there are so many vacancies - we can focus on those things to actually make their working life experience a lot better than it is now," he said.
Strikes could still go ahead - NZNO
In a statement, NZNO lead advocate David Wait said he was glad negotiations had reached this point after talks broke down earlier in the week.
"The DHBs had shown a willingness to move on a number of issues important to our members, but did not have an offer ready by close of business on Wednesday, which was the two-week deadline for issuing the strike notice," he said.
"Timings for the ratification vote will also be announced to members next week ... if the offer is not accepted by members the strikes planned for 19 August and 9 September could still go ahead."
Nurses Organisation announced first Glenda Alexander industrial services manager at NZNO told Checkpoint the offer goes some way towards addressing the primary issues of pay and staffing.
Little said lifting the strike notice was a positive move towards settling district health board nurses' pay claims.
"Now that DHBs no longer have to spend time preparing to deal with the major disruption a strike would cause we can focus instead on resolving the main issue, which is the nurses' pay-equity claim," Little said in a statement.
He said nurses have been underpaid for years and the pay equity claim would be expensive, running to hundreds of millions of dollars, but he was confident they would have an offer to the table in a month's time.
"That'll allow the bargaining to start on that issue and providing that isn't too protracted we could have the pay equity claim settled either by the end of this year or the beginning of next year.
"There's an agreed date from which pay equity will take effect and that is December 2019 ... there will be a back pay."
The offer that is going out to nurses to settle their employment agreement is within the government's employment relations expectations for the public sector, Little said.
