NZPFU national secretary Wattie Watson said the union has continued to issue strike notices as it thinks facilitation will only result in delays.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we need is for Fenz [Fire and Emergency New Zealand] to negotiate rather than continue to hide behind alleged government restrictions as a barrier to settlement,\u201d Watson said. <\/p>\n
The NZPFU said it is fighting for safe systems of work, better access to mental health programmes, efficient occupational cancer and illness processes, full reimbursement of occupational disease blood testing, fair and reasonable wages and other \u201cimportant\u201d claims.<\/p>\n
Health workers striking tomorrow include Allied Health staff, mental health and public health nurses and healthcare assistants, and those covered by the policy, advisory, knowledge and specialist (Paks) collective agreement.<\/p>\n
PSA national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons said workers were striking for safe staffing, fair pay, and better conditions for patients.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese workers are standing up for the public health system that New Zealanders need and deserve,\u201d Fitzsimons said.<\/p>\n
Since then, the parties have attended mediation through the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment, but no settlement has been reached, the PSA said.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, Health NZ and this Government still refuse to hear concerns about the state of our health system. We need to see a commitment to fill vacancies quickly and staff hospitals properly.<\/p>\n
\u201cHealth NZ\u2019s offer would mean workers go backwards. The health system is currently being held together by these workers\u2019 goodwill for their patients. It\u2019s not sustainable, not fair on workers, and doesn\u2019t serve patients well either,\u201d Fitzsimons said.<\/p>\n
Life-preserving service staff levels have been agreed between the PSA and Health NZ for the duration of the strike, the union said.<\/p>\n
An estimated 100,000 workers from the public sector, including doctors, nurses, teachers, and prison staff, took part in the \u201cmega-strike\u201d in October.<\/p>\n
Jaime Lyth is a multimedia journalist for the New Zealand Herald, focusing on crime and breaking news. Lyth began working under the NZ Herald masthead in 2021 as a reporter for the Northern Advocate in Whang\u0101rei.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NZPFU national secretary Wattie Watson said the union has continued to issue strike notices as it thinks facilitation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[74,6030,95,15974,12513,2079,7572,3011,4999,266,134,527,103129,111,139,69,90,8466,4485,2742,2044,61,4518,1533,102,4478],"class_list":["post-155558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-after","tag-again","tag-and","tag-emergency","tag-failed","tag-fire","tag-firefighters","tag-four","tag-friday","tag-government","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-mediation","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-second","tag-strike","tag-thousands","tag-time","tag-to","tag-weeks","tag-will","tag-with","tag-workers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}