Welcome to a new era of industrial action. Same as the last one.

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Forums › Politics › Welcome to a new era of industrial action. Same as the last one.

6FIEND

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#237890 22-Jun-2018 13:42

As widely predicted, the sixth Labour government has spent little time dragging NZ back into a period of Union-driven industrial action.

While Teachers and MBIE staff are clearly signalling their intentions and threatening to strike, nurses have already issued a strike notice for July 5, with a second notice to follow for the 12th.

This article on Scoop sums up what lead to our Nurses walking off the job.

"While actively encouraging nurses to seek higher salaries, the Minister - who implied, while in Opposition, that nurses would be paid more under a Labour Government - refuses to give DHBs the resources to pay them more."

Only that article is from 2004. The Minister in question is Annette King rather than David Clark.

Unsurprisingly, the same tired old policies and ideology-driven politics are delivering exactly the same outcomes as they have done over and over again.

There are many derivations of this quote, but the original is attributed to George Santayana:

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

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#2042409 22-Jun-2018 13:58

Sadly there are people in the private sector who are worse off than many of these public servants. All of them are being ignored, where are their increases? None of them are striking.

This rings alarm bells of the pre Margaret Thatcher era in the UK before she took office. Nurses and ambulances staff were continuously on strike, old aged homes and schools were closing down. The railways was not working.

But its still early days so I am expecting things to get far worse.

The money is running out. Once this labour coalition circus is over, IMO New Zealand is going to be seeing its most right-wing/capitalist government in history.

GV27

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#2042443 22-Jun-2018 14:05

What puzzles me is the union rep I heard saying MBIE staff are going to be striking because they are aggrieved at performance-based remuneration. I mean....where do you start with that?

6FIEND

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#2042445 22-Jun-2018 14:09

Wiggum:

Sadly there are people in the private sector who are worse off than many of these public servants. All of them are being ignored, where are their increases? None of them are striking.

That is another salient point.

Public Sector Salaries were, on average, 34.6% higher than private sector salaries in 2017.

Wiggum

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#2042446 22-Jun-2018 14:14

6FIEND:

Wiggum:

Sadly there are people in the private sector who are worse off than many of these public servants. All of them are being ignored, where are their increases? None of them are striking.

That is another salient point.

Public Sector Salaries were, on average, 34.6% higher than private sector salaries in 2017.

Yip, reminds me about a school teacher I know. Always complaining about her "low salary", yet she does not work the same amount of hours per year as most average people in the private sector, 4 nice long paid breaks a year. Give me a break! I bite my tongue every time she starts her whinging.....

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#2042458 22-Jun-2018 14:47

They don't know they're born.

What about the 18% self employed who get no extra Kiwisaver contributions other than what they pay from their own pockets? And no paid holiday? Or paid sick leave? For example.

amiga500

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#2042466 22-Jun-2018 14:56

Wiggum:

Sadly there are people in the private sector who are worse off than many of these public servants. All of them are being ignored, where are their increases? None of them are striking.

This rings alarm bells of the pre Margaret Thatcher era in the UK before she took office. Nurses and ambulances staff were continuously on strike, old aged homes and schools were closing down. The railways was not working.

But its still early days so I am expecting things to get far worse.

The money is running out. Once this labour coalition circus is over, IMO New Zealand is going to be seeing its most right-wing/capitalist government in history.

As for the railways over there - I was watching one of the episodes on Paddington Station & they'd had a station derailment caused in part by poo and urine being dropped out of the train toilets onto wooden sleepers. Over a period of years the sleepers had rotted away. You might think that after 200 years that aircraft type containment tanks and concrete sleepers might not be a bad idea!

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amiga500

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#2042472 22-Jun-2018 15:01

Nurses claim that they often have to have a whole shift without breaks and meal breaks & even struggle to have a few minutes for a toilet break. If this is even partially true it makes you wonder what Sir John and Sir Bill were thinking. It's a disgrace.

Pumpedd

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#2042480 22-Jun-2018 15:30

I believe it was the Public Service that Labour was referring to during the election campaign as poor and homeless.

GV27

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#2042531 22-Jun-2018 16:57

amiga500:

Nurses claim that they often have to have a whole shift without breaks and meal breaks & even struggle to have a few minutes for a toilet break. If this is even partially true it makes you wonder what Sir John and Sir Bill were thinking. It's a disgrace.

Of course, nurses had extremely comfortable wages in 2008 immediately before they were elected, right?

It's Labour's problem now. They've over-promised and under-delivered. We all want to see nurses and aged caregivers paid what they're worth, but plenty of private sector grads earn bugger all as well, and don't always have a steep earning curve. They face the same cost of living pressures as everyone else. No one is offering them 9% over 18 months.

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#2042621 22-Jun-2018 19:33

Lias

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#2042641 22-Jun-2018 20:23

GV27:

What puzzles me is the union rep I heard saying MBIE staff are going to be striking because they are aggrieved at performance-based remuneration. I mean....where do you start with that?

Every heavily unionised environment I've ever worked in has had huge numbers of employees who are utter deadwood.. The unions exist to protect those people from having to perform.

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amiga500

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#2042712 22-Jun-2018 23:23

GV27:

amiga500:

Nurses claim that they often have to have a whole shift without breaks and meal breaks & even struggle to have a few minutes for a toilet break. If this is even partially true it makes you wonder what Sir John and Sir Bill were thinking. It's a disgrace.

Of course, nurses had extremely comfortable wages in 2008 immediately before they were elected, right?

It's Labour's problem now. They've over-promised and under-delivered. We all want to see nurses and aged caregivers paid what they're worth, but plenty of private sector grads earn bugger all as well, and don't always have a steep earning curve. They face the same cost of living pressures as everyone else. No one is offering them 9% over 18 months.

National had nine years to do something about this. In many ways the nurses conditions of service are even worse than their pay. Who would want a job where you don't get breaks, meal breaks, & struggle to find enough time to go to the toilet? On top of that in Christchurch anyway,the nurses have to park far away from the hospital & if leaving at night time risk their personal safety walking back to their cars. Meanwhile the DHB senior management probably have allocated car parks at the hospital, take breaks, visit the loo any damn time they feel like it, stroll into the city for lunch, prob. work late some days of the week, walk a few steps to their cars & go home. Many of them may belong to the POETS club - which involves an early departure on Fridays!

National did not pay the nurses enough for them to stay in NZ. National did not train enough nurses so hospitals would not be always short staffed. It's a vicious cycle if your workplace is always short staffed of course you start looking around for something better and probably easier.

amiga500

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#2042713 22-Jun-2018 23:30

(POETs club = Pedal Off Early Tomorrow's Saturday - a close translation, to avoid the Geekzone language naughty words filter.)

Aredwood

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#2042717 23-Jun-2018 00:52

The health budget was doubled under the 9 years of the Clark Labour government. And National increased it even more. If that money was actually getting spent properly, nurses pay should have doubled under Helen Clark. Or at doubled over the 18 years of both Clark and Key governments. But I very much doubt that it has.

Yet due to the unions, They will try and block any moves to get rid of excessive layers of management. As a means of freeing up funds to improve front line services. And since the unions always donate lots of money to Labour, and the public sector is heavily unionised. The unions wont be happy if a whole heat of bureaucrats lose their jobs. Even if the money saved went to the front line.

If health and nurses pay was really that bad. Then why arent the regional development slush fund, and the bribes to newbie students getting cancelled? To free up more funding for health and nurses. The answer - again politics. As nurses along with most of the rest health sector will mostly vote labour anyway. So not many extra votes in getting more money to nurses. And also higher income people are more likely to vote National. And are less likely to be union members. So paying proper market rates to nurses might actually cause labour to loose votes.

And by proper market rates - I mean enough that hospitals would always be getting lots of applicants to any advertised nursing jobs. And that there would be lots of competition to get accepted into university nursing studies.

The parking problems are probably caused by some town planner who is living in La La land. Who thinks that the nurses can all just use public transport. And who also probably thinks that hospitals only operate from 9-5 as well.

Varkk

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#2043374 25-Jun-2018 08:44

Labour hasn't changed any of the rules around collective negotiations, strikes or unions yet. So you can't really blame them for the strike action. What is happening is that the public sector unions knew they would never get much out of National so didn't really fight hard. In fact many felt avoiding slipping backwards to be a win over the last nine years. Now they feel with Labour in charge they have a chance to make some real gains so are more willing to fight to get something. Also that Tax Payers Union figure about public sector vs private sector pay is a bit misleading as you see the same differences in private sector unionised vs non-unionised. It is the majority of public sector employees are unionised. So it isn't a public vs private comparison it is actually unionised vs non-unionised.

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