Radius care workers vote to strike

Workers at Radius Fulton Care Centre in Dunedin voted yesterday to strike for up to eight hours to protest a 1.72% pay rise offer.

Dunedin union members joined members at Radius Care facilities around the country in a two-hour stopwork meeting to vote on strike action. The Dunedin members then picketed outside the Hillside Rd care facility.

Service and Food Workers Union Dunedin organiser Ann Galloway said the industrial action also related to a pay dispute from the 2010 collective agreement, which the union said was not properly settled, a claim disputed by Radius.

The national bargaining team would decide how and when the strike action was taken, she said.

New Zealand Nurses Organisation Dunedin organiser Simone Montgomery said her members had also strongly supported the action. Eight hours' lost pay through the strike was a lot of money for low-paid workers, but it showed their strength of feeling, she said.

Workers were struggling to make a living from their wages, which were being eroded by inflation, she said.

Radius Care chief executive Brien Cree, who is also the majority shareholder, said that until the Government put up more money, aged care workers would be low paid.

Radius was passing on the 1.72% funding rise from the Government, despite the fact it had other rising costs.

"We have offered to pay what the Government gave us last year, which is 1.72%."

Rest-homes and aged care hospitals were not making big profits, despite what many people thought, he said. In the aged care sector, only retirement village providers were making good returns, he said.

Mr Cree said he had not had a pay rise in the past year.

"I don't get dividends; I'm on a salary."

Pay rates for workers started on the minimum wage of $13, but there were "very very few" people on that rate, he said.