Thousands of striking healthcare staff chanted and held up placards from 10.45am at the New Zealand Nurses’ Organisation picket, across the road from Christchurch Hospital at Hagley Park.
It was a loud display with a celebratory atmosphere, as the staff and their supporters were encouraged by a continuous stream of passing motorists tooting their horns.
Nurses, midwives and healthcare assistants at district health boards around New Zealand stopped work to take the strike action for eight hours after earlier in the week rejecting a second pay offer.
The NZNO wants a 17 per cent pay hike, five more days sick leave, and the introduction of “safe staffing” protocols.
On Thursday, DHBs and the NZNO will discuss a possible further date for negotiations, and listen to feedback from union members, after the failed pay negotiations and strike.
Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson said the government was totally committed to getting back to the negotiating table, represented by the DHBs.
"Obviously there are some financial constraints in the wake of Covid but we do understand the importance of this workforce and we want to negotiate in good faith," Robertson told RNZ's First Up.
Christchurch nurses were supported by workers from other unionised industries, including teachers as well as railway and maritime transport workers, on the picket line yesterday. They marched from the park to the Bridge of Remembrance at 1pm.Among the nurses attending was NZNO delegate and Christchurch Hospital emergency department registered nurse Lisa Geddes.
“It’s great unity. The support we are getting from the cars going past is making me feel quite valued,” Geddes said.
She has been a nurse for 36 years.
“Thirty-six years of shift work. It’s never been this tough as it is now – patient numbers, patient acuity, staffing shortages,” Geddes said.
“It’s exhausting, overwhelming, we are burnt out.”
Senior registered nurse in the Christchurch Hospital respiratory ward, Noel Moone, said staff shortages made young nurses “scared.”This was because nurse shortages put patients at risk. If something went wrong, nurses could get the blame and lose their registration.
“This is every day, we are short of nurses every day,” Moone said.
His ward’s respiratory specialist role had been disestablished, meaning all senior nurses had to absorb the specialist’s workload.
“It’s dangerous from a patient’s perspective, because nurses are stretched so thin. You are just kind of running from one to another,” Jones said.
Meanwhile, Canterbury DHB healthcare facilities collaborated with NZNO to ensure there were enough staff for the eight-hour strike period to 7pm to ensure urgent and emergency care.
Chief executive Dr Peter Bramley said yesterday afternoon the effects of the strike were hard to quantify.
“The whanau of people currently staying in our facilities have been asked to spend more time with their family member or person they support.
“We are very much looking forward to having our nursing, midwife and healthcare assistant colleagues back on deck.
NZNO industrial services manager Glenda Alexander told Morning Report conditions and pay needed to improve so essential workers did not look to other sectors for a better salary.
"They're kind of interwoven [pay and conditions]. If we don't pay people what they're worth, what the job is worth, they're not going to stay and we're not going to get new people into the nursing workforce."
Nurses and midwives were exhausted and there was a need to attract more people to replace an ageing workforce that was set to retire, Alexander said.
"If we can't improve conditions whereby new nurses come into the system, we're in serious trouble.
"Nurses do their very best at work to not reveal to patients that they're caring for what's really going on but patients see some of that stuff - they see the nurses running from person to person, they note they haven't had breaks."
The union wanted systems that were agreed to in the last bargaining period put into place, including ensuring the right people were on shifts and boosting capacity to respond to demand.
"We want to see that put well in place ... so that our members have surety that when they come to work they are going to have workloads that are manageable," Alexander said.
Canterbury DHB clinical nurse specialist Nikki Reid, who was also a union member, said there was a huge amount of public support yesterday with people even signing a petition to Minister of Health Andrew Little.
"The fact we had so many nurses out on the picket line is indicative of the depth of feeling for nursing that we have to get this correct because at the end of the day this is also about, or hugely about, patient safety," Reid said.
"I would say it is incumbent on the DHBs and the government to produce a better offer so that we can recruit and retain nurses and have a nursing workforce that is safely staffed to ensure best outcomes for those patients."
Manukau Surgery Centre associate clinical nurse manager Audrey Hauraki, a union delegate, agreed, saying the strike was not just about pay.
"I don't think our members want to focus entirely on the wages that we're after - for all those nurses that turned up yesterday, they took a day off without pay because that's how passionately they feel."
It was "heart-breaking" to hear stories about nurses turning up to work and finding they were short-staffed, Hauraki said.
"And then to get to the end of the shift and not be able to leave because there aren't enough nurses coming on to take over from you.
"Everyday our nurses turn up to places like ED where they are assaulted, physically and emotionally abused and it's just not on."
DHBs keen to 'close gaps'
Spokesperson for all the DHBs, Jim Green, said had been making progress with continuous improved offers, but welfare and staffing levels were of still concern to the workers.
"We've made offers around all those areas - we've made a pay rise increase of up to 8 to 12 percent and of course there's the pay equity settlement that will be coming in on top of that as well," he told Morning Report.
"We think we've been able to address many of their requirements and we're looking to see where some of the gaps can be closed by the nurses and the [union] members."
Further negotiations were needed to see how the problems could be resolved, Green said.
Nearly all non-urgent surgery and outpatient clinics had to be postponed yesterday as a result of the eight-hour strike.
"That will take time to work back into the schedule [the elective surgeries], we're of course doing a lot of work to catch up after the time lost last year around Covid, so it'll add to the work we have to do," Green said.
It was difficult for services to operate during the strike but they had managed, he said.
"It's always difficult to manage during a strike and it really took all of the efforts of all of the people who weren't striking - the volunteers, family members, and of course the life-preserving services provided by the union - to get us through that time."
-Additional reporting: RNZ
