Nursing pay battle intensifies

Nurses planning to strike over pay have accused district health boards (DHBs) of misleading the public by saying nurses could earn $93,000 a year under the revised pay deal.

A nurse would need to work fulltime, plus weekends, nights and do overtime to earn that much, their union says.

But DHBs stand by the figure, saying it is based on what experienced fulltime nurses earn on average now.

The situation came to a head on Monday, when DHBs released details of their revised offer in the afternoon, hours after the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) announced its 27,000 eligible members had voted to strike for two days in July.

The revised offer included three 3 per cent pay increases, a $2000 lump sum and the creation of two new pay steps in a package worth about $520 million over two years.

DHBs spokeswoman Helen Mason said: ‘‘By December 2019, the average take home pay of a full-time experienced registered nurse will be around $93,000 a year.’’

The figure was a before tax amount, and included penal and overtime rates on top of base salary. Nurses responded by taking to social media, deriding the figure as misleading and unrealistic.

NZNO industrial relations manger Cee Payne on Tuesday said: "The hypothetical $93,000 came from an example of a nurse working full time, with some overtime and significant weekend and night work. The reality is that the majority of nurses in this bracket are not full time and not working rostered shifts on top of this. We do not think it was helpful or fair to present to the public, via the media, pay scale examples that have the potential to obscure the actual pay increases for our members.’’

Mason said the scenario was based on the average earnings of all registered nurses currently employed at the top pay scale – which was about half the total workforce.

‘‘In simple terms it also means this person will work a normal 40 hour week with 60 hours overtime across the year, just over an hour per week,’’ she said.

‘‘It also assumes between 25 and 30 per cent of all shifts would fall on weekends, night and evenings as part of normal roster patterns.’’

The numbers

There are currently five pay steps. Registered nurses and midwives start on $49,449 and can reach the top pay rate of $66,755 in their fifth year of work.

The revised offer proposed creating two new pay steps beyond that, with the new top rate of

$77,386 to come into effect from December next year. All registered nurses and midwives who had been on the current top rate for a year would automatically progress onto the two new stages as they became available.

Mason said a pay scenario provided a breakdown of the $93,874 a nurse currently at the top rate could earn under the terms of the offer as of July 2020. It included base salary of $77,386, a professional development allowance of

$3000, 60 hours of overtime for

$4242, 360 hours of weekend penal time for $6936, and 240 hours of night penal time for $2312.