The close ratification of hard-fought Te Whatu Ora negotiations, is naturally a time of reflection and analysis. Will the acceptance of this offer stem the tide of nurses leaving our shores to work in Australia for better pay, nurse to patient ratios, equitable work conditions or more career opportunities?
Just as nurses are leaving our shores, so are our police. They too are in negotiations.
One day after the te Whatu Ora ratification I took the time to read the Sunday Star Times. One article caught my attention. The police told “tales of blood and trauma in (a) push for better pay.” For the first time in 90 years, the Police Association has launched a pay bargaining campaign, a push for a 5% bump for its members, in line with the increased cost of living. What they have been offered is 0.6%. Their campaign hammers home the impact of ‘ordinary people doing the extraordinary’ in circumstances that most people never experience.
The parallels between nurses and police are a matter of record, after all they are our equity pay process comparators. The impact of the work we do, resonates in the stories told, burnout, moral distress, giving your all at work and walking through your front door, on empty. We all have experiences that do not leave us. We know what we signed up for, but as one police officer said…
“No-one signs up to slowly lose pieces of themselves, while being told they should simply be grateful to have (a) job.’
We attempted to tell the Government and our employers through our recent negotiations, we should be valued fairly for the work we do, the trauma we carry, and the sacrifices our families make alongside us. To no avail. We certainly have not won parity with Queensland, let alone New South Wales Read my last blog here. Why not?
Research has repeatedly shown us that gender discrimination in pay and work conditions remains prevalent. However, the current Coalition Government has added an extra layer of oppression to this state of affairs. We now see police and firefighters, jobs that are still largely thought of as male dominated, being treated in the same way as nurses. Elongated negotiations. Lack of funding to recruit to need rather than budget or resourcing the equipment and support staff required to do the job safely.
We see the same platitudes rolled out by government and sector bosses. Police Minister Mark Mitchell said that he had a “deep respect for all our Police staff. Their safety is constantly on my mind and motivates me to do as much as I can to support them…” which doesn’t seem much from where the police on the ground are standing.
Nor is it for nurses. Our bargaining team stood on the kaupapa of safe staffing to provide safe care in a context where, we now know, te Whatu Ora bosses deliberately withheld the information on ‘shifts below target’ for nearly a year and only provided the data when the Ombudsman got involved. Trying to pin down any politician, leading into the coming general election, to make a solid promise to turn this around with our NZNO member led call for legislated culturally safe nurse to patient ratios underpinned by fit for purpose Care Capacity Demand Management in all sectors of the health system, is like trying to hold a slippery eel in your hands.
Reflecting back on our collective agreement, it is important to remember we use democratic processes in our organisation. The majority have spoken. We no longer allow NZNO management to ‘recommend’ an offer. We are member led, so it is on us to decide. But we must also think of the context we are making these decisions in. When all those who work in jobs that people rely on for help when they need it are being told through contract negotiations and changes in legislation and regulation that we are not valued, that we need to be just ‘grateful’ for a job, that our struggles to put food on the table, and keep a roof over our heads are of no consequence to those who are ‘rich and sorted’, what do we do next? These positions are straight out of The Far-Right Playbook.
The ‘Far Right’ reframes exclusion as protection, hierarchy as common sense, and the erosion of rights as democratic renewal. Division, shattered social cohesion and confusion reigns. But democracies rarely collapse overnight. They are hollowed or through language, lowered expectations, and the quiet normalisation of ideas once considered unacceptable.
So, we need to remind ourselves that we are ordinary people doing the extraordinary, every day. That without us, society would collapse. That power is with the people and we still have the right to exercise that power through the coming elections. In the run up to the elections we need to remind those who wish to ‘govern’, that they are governing for us, with us, not without us. We need their policies to reflect the will of the people. And the people have been clear in the last 20 months. We will not tolerate the decimation of te Tiriti o Waitangi and its place in government. We will not accept the shift of public health to privatisation and it goes on.
We do want those who provide care and support to be paid fairly and treated with respect. We all want healthy homes, a fully funded public system, and jobs that allow us to go home with enough left in the tank to be with our families as we choose. Finally, we want a government that is fair, democratic, and of the people, for the people, a government that honours its te Tiriti foundations, and is not bound by those few that have too much and want more. It will be the people that decide. The ordinary people, who do the extraordinary, every day.