Opinion

‘Show some respect to nurses’ — Steve Chadwick on halting of pay equity claims

By Steve Chadwick

May 13, 2025

Primary and Community Health Association (PCHA) chair Steve Chadwick says New Zealand’s struggling health system and nursing workforce have been dealt another significant blow by the mass dumping of 33 pay equity claims this month.

Protestors at Parliament on May 6 when the Government announced plans to scrap 33 pay equity claims underway and raise the bar.

At a glance

An estimated 150,000-plus women will be impacted by the mass halting of 33 current pay equity claims. Those include 10 claims from NZNO on behalf of care and support workers, primary health nurses, health-care assistants (HCAs) and administrators, community nurses, Plunket nurses, hospice nurses and HCAs, aged-care nurses, sexual health nurses and laboratory nurses. 

The Government’s fast-tracked changes to the Equal Pay Act 1972 and halting progress of any existing claims is a kick in the gut to the many nurses who work in primary and community health care.

Steve Chadwick.

It shows absolute disregard for the important role that primary and community care nurses and carers play in the health of New Zealanders.

The Government’s Pay Equity Amendment Bill passed under urgency on May 8, also tightens the pay equity criteria, making it harder for claims to be sought. Additional to this, any existing pay equity claims will be halted and those claims will need to be resubmitted under the new and more stringent criteria.

I call on Minister of Health Simeon Brown to show more respect for the many nurses and carers who have dedicated their lives to supporting their community.

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What the Government is actually doing is saying to local communities: ‘You don’t matter.

Halting pay equity claim action and amending the equal pay laws means community nurses and carers who have been battling for years to close the pay gap with their hospital counterparts will have to go back to the drawing board.

Brown should be ashamed of this action. It is wrong and it is abusive.

NZNO’s Pacific nursing section committee has made their feelings about the Government’s decision to axe all current pay equity claims and raise the bar for lodging claims with their sign: ‘Do not discriminate against Pacific Women. We deserve pay equity.’

What the Government is actually doing is saying to local communities is: ‘You don’t matter. Your jobs and your health are not a priority to us.’

What is also alarming is that the Government’s reason for this action is to “reduce the cost to the Crown“.

This signals that the Government is intent on crushing the health system in order to pay for tax cuts and money for landlords. This will send the health of individuals, families and communities, many of whom are already struggling under this Government, into further decline.

That in itself is a false economy and drives false savings. While the Government pinches money from community services, it will inevitably have to spend more money to prop up hospital services when people become very unwell. It’s completely nonsensical.

  • Chair of the Primary and Community Health Association (PCHA), Steve Chadwick is a former Labour Party Minister for Women’s Affairs and Associate Health  Minister. Also a nurse, in the 1970s and ’80s Chadwick was a union representative at the New Zealand Nurses’ Association (which merged with the Nurses’ Union to become NZNO in 1993). She was mayor of Rotorua from 2013 to 2022.

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