LIVE: Health Minister Andrew Little on nurses‘ pay

Health Minister Andrew Little has called a media briefing at Parliament this morning.

Nurses are set to strike on Thursday after they rejected the District Health Boards' (DHBs) latest pay offer at the end of last month.

They lifted their strike notice for 29-30 July while considering the offer but said that while the DHBs had made promising moves on pay, the offer contained "too many ambiguities".

Little then told media the deal - which included a lump-sum payment, an advance on the fair pay deal and a base pay rate increase - had been proposed by the unions themselves.

It also included commitments to conduct a ministerial review of the safe staffing accord, to review inconsistent rollout of care capacity demand management, and to run a joint recruitment campaign between the ministry and NZNO.

One of the nurses' concerns has been that only 10 of the 20 DHBs had met safe staffing level requirements.

As well as Thursday's strike, a further 24-hour strike is planned for 9 September.

More to come...

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2 comments

Tom Ranger

Posted on 17-08-2021 13:01 | By Tom Ranger

Time to re-start the money printer Grant? Dossers.


Too little.

Posted on 17-08-2021 17:56 | By morepork

The more I see and hear this man the more he worries me. This is the same guy who did not follow up on Border worker vaccinations and just assumed it was OK, putting all of Tauranga at risk, after it transpired that only 9 Port workers were vaccinated. Now he's saying that the unions put forward the Nurse's deal, but the Nurses are striking anyway. If they are striking, it's because there are doubts about the veracity of the promises made. Nurses and health workers don't strike as a first option. Instead of deflecting blame to the Unions, the Health Minister should be reassuring nervous nurses and making sure that promises made are upheld and actioned. (In fact, he should be proud to do so...) I hope this isn't a case of Mr. Little doing too little and creating a problem where there doesn't need to be one.


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