Student nurses have called for the government to take the eight-hour strike planned for June seriously, or face losing graduates to Australia.
The New Zealand Nurses Organisation voted to strike on June 9 for eight hours after the government offered a 1.38% pay increase, a percentage just under the rate of inflation.
Coupled with the announcement of a public sector pay freeze, Lead Advocate and NZNO Industrial Advisor David Wait said that nurses have worked horrific and unsafe conditions for a long time, and are genuinely worried about the future of the profession.
Students said they are also worried about the future. One said “with the lack of staff that is occurring, a lot of student nurses I’ve talked to say that as soon as they qualify they’ll be shooting over to Australia. The fear is that we’ll have a lack of nurses in New Zealand — meaning the current nurses will still be overworked, and not paid for the time they spend working.”
“The strike is necessary because of the extra pressures and stresses on nurses due to the pandemic,” said one student from Ara in Christchurch. They said that while nurses’ workload and responsibilities have increased, their pay does not reflect this new work.
Another student nurse, from Otago Polytechnic, said: “It’s important for everyone to realise what is happening to nurses across New Zealand. We’re being very underpaid and are currently being overworked due to the lack of staff that we have.”
They said that “it’s really upsetting to know that the three year degree we’re paying for is not being given back to us. We’re there to do our job, and people need to understand how much we actually do, instead of thinking that nurses are just there to wipe peoples’ bums or whatever. We do the paperwork, we support the doctors, we support the teams. Without nurses the hospitals would not run.”