Strikes set to scatter patients elsewhere

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

Seriously ill patients from five North Island health districts face being squeezed into wards in Auckland and other main centres during a barrage of nurses' strikes.

This may mean cancelling non-urgent operations in metropolitan hospitals to allow for any influx of emergency cases when the strikes by about 4000 nurses start in a fortnight over large parts of provincial New Zealand.

The Nurses Organisation served notices yesterday of three strikes - starting with a 24-hour stopwork from 7am on June 4 - by members in the Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Lakes (Rotorua), Northland and Tairawhiti (Gisborne) district health boards.

They also intend striking for the eight-hour day shift on June 10, and then for 16 hours from 2.30pm on June 12, unless they gain improved pay offers at mediated talks this week.

Complex elective surgery such as heart operations at Waikato with long recovery times face cancellation in the next few days, building to the closure during the strikes of all but essential services at the 19 hospitals and clinics hit by the dispute.

Health boards in Auckland and other main centres are being asked to make room for emergency cases.

"We are reviewing all theatre lists to assess the complexity and urgency of patients' conditions so we can have the hospitals close to empty on strike days," said Lakes chief executive Cathy Cooney, spokeswoman for the five regional boards.

Auckland District Health Board spokeswoman Megan Richards said her organisation would cancel some of its own non-urgent operations if necessary to make room for regional patients "but we hope we won't have to".

Peace talks between the warring parties have been arranged for two days starting tomorrow, but the boards embroiled in the dispute are questioning the union's willingness to enter mediation in good faith.

Mrs Cooney says the strike threat endangers "excellent progress" made towards merging terms and conditions into a single employment agreement covering all five districts.

But union spokesman Shane Vugler says the parties remain substantially apart on core issues of pay and sick-leave entitlements, as reflected by a 98 per cent vote by nurses to reject the boards' pay offers and 94 per cent support for industrial action.

"They are tired of subsidising the public health system - they are 20 per cent to 25 per cent behind where they should be by international comparisons and against other professions such as police and teachers," he said.

The union seeks pay parity with Auckland nurses as a "first step" towards closing the gap in a joint approach it wants to make with health boards to the Government for a major funding boost in next year's budget.