Health Boards must pull managers to prevent nurses' strike
“It is time for the elected Health Boards to intervene with their managers who can’t get past the Employment Contracts
Act ideology,” the president of the Council of Trade Unions Ross Wilson said today.
He was responding to the news that nurses’ strikes will go ahead next week in Northland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Lakes
and Tairawhati because employers are insisting that senior nurses be excluded from the collective negotiations.
“Health care in these hospitals is going to be jeopardised because a few managers are continuing to pursue the divisive
“them and us” management ideologies of the 1990’s,” Ross Wilson said.
“Their rigid stand not only defies common sense, it is also totally contrary to government policies aimed at developing
more co-operative employment relationships in the health sector,” he said.
“At the request of the Minister of Health the CTU is engaged with the District Health Boards Association of New Zealand
in developing tripartite strategies to improve employment relations in DHB’s.”.
“We are wasting our time if dinosaur managers are simply allowed to hijack negotiations over an ideological obsession
and cause bitter and unnecessary industrial chaos in hospitals.”
“Elected members of Health Boards must exercise their governance role to prevent such destructive ideology.”
“I will be calling on all unions to provide support to the nurses, and I am sure that there will be widespread community
support as well.”