Nurses around Central Otago and Queenstown Lakes took part in a nationwide strike for pay parity yesterday (Thursday October 27), standing in the rain for hours holding up New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) fair pay posters.

They were among an estimated 4,200 Primary Health Care (PHC) and Plunket nurses across New Zealand who striked for four hours on Thursday over employers’ inability to deliver pay parity with nurses employed by Health NZ Te Whatu Ora, due to a lack of government funding.

The protest follows more than a year of failed negotiations with employers.

New Zealand College of Primary Health Care nurses chair Tracey Morgan said the nurses who work in medical centres and after-hours emergency clinics as well as those employed at Plunket were on strike to demand respect and bring attention to the value PHC provides to Aotearoa.

"The inability to fix pay parity shows a basic lack of respect for our professionalism and the contribution we have made to keeping people out of hospital every day and for being the first defence against Covid-19.”

PHC nurses had the same qualifications, training and responsibilities as Te Whatu Ora nurses but were paid significantly less, she said.

She said PHC nurses earn as much as 10 to 20 percent less than their colleagues at Te Whatu Ora, while Māori and iwi provider nurses are even worse off - receiving as much as 25 percent less.

"Unfair wages are causing nurses to leave Primary Health Care and that means fewer services and longer wait times for people in the community, which puts their health at risk.

"The government wants to blame the staffing crisis on the hard winter, but the real problem is that nurses are leaving Primary Care because they are underpaid and this is having terrible flow-on effects for community health services.

"It is also massively impacting on hospital emergency departments. More people are turning up at EDs acutely unwell because they have not been able to access Primary Health Care services locally."

She said further strike action could not be ruled out if pay parity was not achieved soon.

Nurses covered by the PHC collective agreement and the Plunket agreement had rejected an employer offer of three percent or less, with further talks having stalled because employers say their funding from the government is too low for them to offer any more.