30,000 members from The New Zealand Nurses Organisation, who work in DHBs have voted overwhelmingly to reject a second offer in their current round of multi-employer collective agreement negotiations.

This means the eight-hour strike planned for Wednesday will go ahead affecting all public hospitals and DHB facilities.

The ballot closed today at Noon and NZNO Lead Advocate David Wait said he was pleased at the exceptionally high voter turnout and at the member unity the result reveals.

“Members are facing serious nursing workforce issues, with pay rates that do not attract people into the profession or retain the people we have, and staffing levels which stretch them to breaking point, putting them and their patients at risk.”

“This second DHB offer has not significantly changed and does not address these issues. Our members are genuinely concerned that nursing shortages would increase if it was accepted, and that standards of care for all in New Zealand would suffer as a result.”

“Ironically some DHBs have requested to have more staff on strike day to provide life preserving services than they would ordinarily have in their wards on a non-strike day. That staff levels are regularly below life preserving services levels should concern everyone.

“We want the DHBs to be transparent about this being a large-scale problem where staff and patients are regularly put at risk. The DHBs have attempted to respond to this claim, but after years of delays and failed promises, members want to see some accountability on their part.”

Two weeks ago Acting Chief Executive for Canterbury and West Coast DHBs, Becky Hickmott said the number one consideration was patient safety, and acknowledged that NZNO also supported patient safety by providing Life Preserving Services (LPS) during the strike.

“Urgent and emergency care will remain available throughout the period of the planned strike. This includes the Emergency Department, acute surgery, all intensive care units, cancer care and the Renal Dialysis unit.”

 “111 calls will be responded to as usual and people should access urgent and emergency care as they normally would, but expect things to be busy.”

“There are close to 5000 nurses, midwives and healthcare assistants at Canterbury and West Coast DHBs who may strike, so the strikes are expected to cause significant disruption to non-urgent services in both regions.”

 “We are putting a number of measures in place to ensure we can continue to provide urgent and emergency care during the strikes. Our contingency plans are about rescheduling what isn’t urgent and reducing the demand on the staff who will be working on this day.”