After year of hell, nurses refuse to take bitter pill
"[In Australia] they get twice what we get. It is so crazy." Mafile’o Talakai, nurse
Remember lockdown? Baking sourdough, quality time with family and pulling the dog around the block five times a day?
For registered nurse Mafile’o Talakai the experience was vastly different. For her, the go-hard and go-early restrictions meant long hours, pressure injuries from PPE gear, and staying isolated from her vulnerable parents.
Like other front-line workers in New Zealand, the personal toll was high — add to it the constant fear of contracting Covid-19.
So when news hit that there would be pay restrictions for another two years the reaction was immediate.
“It was especially bad because earlier that week we had been comparing wage slips on a group chat with a colleague who had just moved to Australia,” Auckland Hospital nurse Talakai said. “She had just got her first week’s pay and it was the same amount as what we get in a fortnight.”
Talakai, 28, has been saving for her first house but said that would be on hold if there was no pay rise.
“We felt like the work we did wasn’t valued and we were being asked to do something the private sector doesn’t have to do,” Talakai, a member of the New Zealand Nurses Association, said.
“We are already understaffed so why would you make a profession so unattractive during a pandemic when we could still have a serious outbreak?”
The pay-freeze and conditions have pushed tens of thousands of nurses across the country to walk off the job for eight hours next month. Talakai will be with them “100,000 per cent”
She said the essential industry was at breaking point, with many colleagues making “concrete plans” to move across the ditch.
“They are not just talking about it now, they are seriously looking into it. [In Australia] they get twice what we get.
It is so crazy, and not only that, they have a really great support system, they have the appropriate tools and resources needed.”
The restrictions will prevent pay rises for public servants who earn more than $100,000 a year, until 2024, and limit them to people on more than $60,000 .
Talakai and most of her colleagues at Auckland Hospital fall between $60,000 and $100,000. “With the pay freeze, it was all so confusing. I am between $60,000 and $100,000 and they say there will be some pay rise but we don’t know what that is.”
To receive the news was tough.
“I live at home and my parents fall under the vulnerable population so every time I come home it is about minimising risk.”
At the height of restrictions, she isolated from her parents and followed strict procedures when reaching home, showering and cleaning all communal surfaces. “I would enter through the garage, leave my bag and shoes and go straight to the shower. I would disinfect all of the surfaces and then go straight to my room. I could hear my family through the walls but there was no affection, no hugs.”
At work, there were similar restrictions: to reduce the risk of the spread of Covid. “It was something I have never experienced before. “Masks, PPE, social distancing, so many procedures and restrictions.
Union representatives met Government officials this week to defend their members’ right “to be treated in good faith while negotiating their multiemployer collective agreement with the district health boards”.
Glenda Alexander from the New Zealand Nurses Organisation said it was ironic they met on the eve of International Nurses Day.
“This flies in the face of the massive contribution nurses, midwives, healthcare assistants and kaimahi hauora . . . have made during the response to the Covid-19 pandemic.”