Midwives begin daily strike action
More than 1150 district health board-employed midwives across the country began strike action yesterday.
They are walking off the job for two hours, twice a day, over two weeks to December 5.
It is only the second time midwives have taken industrial action, according to the College of Midwives. It comes after a longrunning pay dispute between Meras, the midwives’ union, and the 20 district health boards.
The first strike started at 11am and went to 1pm, with another scheduled for 8pm-10pm.
On Wednesday, DHBs rejected the latest offer put forward by the union during mediation in a lastditch effort to avoid strike action.
Midwifery union co-leader Caroline Conroy said strikes would not go ahead if the safety of women and their babies was compromised. Most union members rostered on duty will be at work during the strikes, providing ‘‘life preserving services’’.
Life preserving services in a maternity context includes caring for all women admitted to a maternity unit for the duration of labour and until two hours after birth.
But the fact some DHBs have requested more midwives than would normally be rostered on duty, highlighted the severe under-staffing in maternity units around the country, Conroy said.
‘‘The union is being asked to find members willing to fill gaps in rosters. It is not the purpose of [those staff] to fix staffing shortages,’’ she said.
Conroy said the extent of life preserving services having to be provided by Meras members reinforced the union’s position that as health professionals, midwives’ work was highly skilled, with a significant level of responsibility.
Midwives, therefore, should be paid accordingly, she said.
Meras industrial co-leader Jill Ovens said midwives had been offered the same pay rates as nurses despite having a ‘‘different code of practice, different expertise and a different history to nurses’’. Ovens said all health professionals deserved to be paid fairly for the work, qualifications and experience they had, and DHB midwives were ‘‘no different’’. ‘‘Other health professionals like physiotherapists and occupational therapists have pay differentials that reflect their qualifications, level of responsibility and scope of practice.
‘‘Why shouldn’t midwives have their pay rates set in the same way?’’
While some of their fellow midwives could not strike as they were ‘‘providing life-preserving services’’, a core group of 30 midwives and supporters protested in Dunedin’s Octagon yesterday afternoon.
‘‘The feedback has been great, and the public are aware that we have been alongside them keeping their mothers and babies safe’’, organiser Michelle Archer said. Archer, who has been a midwife since 2002, said that since that time the workload had increased while the pay scale had not changed.
‘‘It is very rewarding but it is very difficult, we are always understaffed.’’