Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Paul Goulter: Nurses' Organisation CEO on the strike action taking place today

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Paul Goulter: Nurses' Organisation CEO on the strike action taking place today · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Don't go to the hospital today. Thirty six thousand nurses
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: on strike. Paul Goalzet is the New Zealand Nurses' Organization
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: chief executive. He's with us this morning. Paul, good morning,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Good morning. Now, no one is going to die because
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: of the strike, are they. You've got life preserving services
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: ready to go.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Each hospital is required to ensure there's a minimum
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: number of staff to ensure patient care continues.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: It's all over, ironically actually safe staffing levels. And you
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: think the changes that have been made will mean that
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: there will be fewer nurses on a shift. Do you
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: know how many fewer it might mean?
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: No, no, we don't because it varies. The very nature
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: that staffing system that they want to pause means that
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: there's great variance across the different wards, et cetera, according
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: to just how many patients have gotten and just how
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: sick or injured those particular patients are. So there's great variants.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: And we have actually tried to ascertain through official information
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: requests from the Fatal War exactly what that number looks like,
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: but we can't get that data.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: They won't give you the data on how many nurses
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: are needed per patient to be safe.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: We'll put it another way, how many short they are
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: on each shift?
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Right? Well, that seems a bit MINGI of them.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: I would have thought, yeah, yeah, if you try to
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: work together with an employer, that's pretty critical information and
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: it's been being withheld and we've really asking for that
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: through the bargaining as well, through the good faith provisions
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: and the bargaining. But we would like to work together
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: on this rather than just have them make unilateral decisions.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: If your goal is highlight to the public how unsafe
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: staffing is, is taking you know, thirty six thousand nurses
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: off for an eight hour shift the last way to
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: make the point.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Well, this is what the nurses themselves asked for. You know,
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: we've been bargaining for a number of months. They're exasperated
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: by how the process drags on and it happens every
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: time we do this. And then finally to funtal War
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: came up with the sort of these are our two
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: key positions. One is this are safe staffing, pausing that,
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: et cetera. That alarms nurses because already they are understaffed
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: and pausing it exacerbates that problem. And also there's issues
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: around the wage increase as well.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: All right, Paul, thank you very much your time. Appreciate
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: it. It's Paul Galter. He's the New Zealand Nurses Organization chief executive.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: That struck between eleven am and seven pm today and
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: people saying, don't worry, you know no one will die. Well,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: I mean you can't say that, ken, you don't know
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: that for sure. But they're basically just saying you will
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: still be able to access healthcare should you need it,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: especially if you are in a critical condition and the
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: need of that. By the way, their pay increase that
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: they were looking at that he was just talking about it,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: then half a percent they've been offered for April twenty
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: twenty five year, and then one percent the year after that.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: They say it's not inflation, so it's essentially a pay cut.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live
• 3:06
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• 3:09
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