| About 370 preoperative, theatre and postoperative nurses who are members of NZNO working at the three hospitals, will join senior doctors at Auckland City Hospital for a two-hour strike tomorrow.
NZNO delegate and perioperative nurse Alissa Baker said the nurses are standing up against involuntary overtime. This stand is part of the current collective agreement bargaining between NZNO and Te Whatu Ora. “Nurses should be paid appropriately for the work we are doing, and that does not include forced overtime as the Te Whatu Ora proposal seeks to enforce,” Baker says. NZNO chief executive Paul Goulter says it is appropriate the perioperative nurses are striking on May Day.  “May Day is a day for workers and unions around the world to celebrate workers’ rights and the union movement. It is timely that our perioperative nurses are making a stand for fair pay on May Day. “The Government continues to chronically under-resource health, is increasing the privatisation of health services and fails to address the crisis in primary and aged residential care. This is another insult to other nurses and other health care workers around the country. “This year NZNO members will join their fellow union members around the country at Fight Back for Health and Fight Back Together events,” Paul Goulter says. The nationwide May Day kaupapa will see thousands of workers from a wide range of industries in both the public and private sectors, take action in lunchtime hui, stop work meetings and strike action, says NZCTU President Richard Wagstaff.  “Every year on May Day workers and their unions around the world celebrate the union movement, our history, and our purpose – to build workers’ power and solidarity. “This year we are coming together to resist the ongoing assault on workers and unions in Aotearoa New Zealand over the past 18 months. This Government has declared war on working people. They are removing our rights, destroying jobs, and ruining the economy,” Wagstaff says. “We are sending send a strong message to those in power that we demand a better deal for working people, and an end to the attack on unions. We will also be calling on the Government to deliver pay equity and honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi. “Workers are sick and tired of having their rights trampled on by this Government, and this Thursday will be out in force to demand change,” Wagstaff said. |
“Get your whānau involved in the kaupapa” – Nurse to march with her mokopuna on May Day Gina Chaffey-Aupouri, a primary health nurse from small East Coast town Ruatoria, intends to march with her two-year-old mokopuna (grandchild) Hunter Ray Pakaurangi Higgins when the May Day hīkoi to Gisborne Hospital begins tomorrow morning. “My moko and I recently did the Relay for Life together – he loved it!
“Yes, this kaupapa is about health and justice for me – fairer pay for all nurses everywhere, but it’s also bigger than that. It’s about making the public health system better and safer for everyone but especially our mokopuna.” Chaffey-Aupouri has been a nurse for more than 40 years and currently works as a rural health registered community nurse prescriber at Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Porou Oranga. Her mother has just retired as the kitchen lead at Gisborne Hospital and her daughter manages an organisation that encourage health and wellbeing initiatives throughout the East Coast.
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