Campaigning for fair pay in the private sector: NZNO--both members and staff--will be working hard this year to ensure the benefits of fair pay in the public sector flow through to nurses and caregivers in the private sector.

Now the ink is dry on the national multi-employer collective agreement (MECA) and the "fair pay" settlement for nurses and midwives working in public hospitals has been achieved, NZNO must turn its focus and resources to winning that same battle in the private sector. It will be a far more difficult task, with members in hundreds of private sector workplaces and union membership as low as ten percent in parts of the workforce.

We can't do it all at once. Our initial targets in the private sector have and will continue to be where we have significant numbers of union members willing to engage in collective action and campaign activity. To have successful "fair pay" outcomes, nurses and other private sector members have a responsibility to help build the union's strength. We need leaders, activists, delegates, communicators, recruiters and visible members--the U in union has to be you!

Historically, employers in the private sector have been harsher and less willing to maintain conditions such as weekend, afternoon and night shift allowances, public holiday payments and leave entitlements in single employer collective agreements (CA). The Employment Contracts Act opened the way for workers in smaller workplaces to be stripped of these conditions because of their reduced power in bargaining.

Pay differential has widened

A comparison of base rates and conditions in the public and private sector national awards before 1990 demonstrates that workers enjoyed the same or very similar pay and conditions. A nurse working in an aged-care hospital or a nurse working in a public hospital under their respective national awards received the same payments for weekend work, overtime and public holidays. The gap in 2004 for those workers, before the fair pay settlement, had widened to, at best guess, a minimum of 20 percent total pay per annum. The impact of the "fair pay" settlement could mean that this year there is as much as a 62 percent pay differential for nurses working in the aged-care sector, compared with their public sector counterparts. (1) Other members in the private sector have also experienced a growing gap between their pay and that of public sector workers during the 1990s and early 2000s.

NZNO membership in the private sector falls into three key workplace groupings:

* aged care (membership predominantly nurses and caregivers in equal numbers)

* primary health care (membership predominantly practice nurses but growing numbers of Maori and iwi provider health workers)

* private hospitals (membership predominantly nurses)

Since 2003 NZNO has been developing national strategies to improve pay and conditions for private sector members and to address their other industrial and professional concerns.

Consolidating bargaining

The focus of the bargaining strategies has been to mimic the DHB sector by consolidating bargaining into bigger units, so workers increase their bargaining power through larger groups of members negotiating together. At the same time, it is hoped these consolidation strategies will also increase union membership at targeted workplaces. This increases the number of workers covered by a CA, giving the union more strength and ensuring more workers receive more favourable pay and conditions.

In the aged-care sector we began bargaining last November for a national CA for Guardian Healthcare Group members who work in 26 workplaces throughout New Zealand. This year we have started consolidating Presbyterian Support CAs into a national CA and agreements at New Zealand lifecare into a national CA.

In the private hospital sector we have aligned the current 13 hospice CAs and identified a further 17 hospice workplaces to include in a national hospice MECA. We intend to be bargaining in August/September this year to secure "fair pay" for hospice nurses.

In the primary health care (PHC) sector we were fortunate in having several national CAs already in existence--the biggest being the practice nurse MECA. NZNO is currently exploring plans with PHC members to extend the coverage of the practice nurse MECA into a PHC MECA. The goal is for the new MECA to cover 80 percent of PHC workers. We are planning a very visual campaign to make this a reality.

The other main thrust of the bargaining strategies is, where there is high union membership, eg in private hospitals, to directly bargain for pay parity with the public sector. This strategy was very successful last year, with a significant number of private hospital and national PHC negotiations achieving pay parity. This year the aim of these negotiations will be to reach fair pay settlements. Nurses in these workplaces have been very committed and we have seen increased industrial action around the country to get some significant pay increases.

Campaigns aimed at collective action

Campaigns such as the recently launched Fair Share for Aged Care are also about bringing members together for collective action to win fair pay in a sector where bargaining is less effective or non existent because of low union membership. Delegates and members have been getting active in the campaign by signing petitions, lobbying MPs, being visible on last month's Day of Action, getting thousands of postcards signed and sent to the Prime Minister, taking part in industry training and putting their hands up to be aged-care leaders. The messages about under-funding and low pay for members working in aged care are being heard loud and clear by the Government and the public.

Our combined efforts will continue until we win fair pay for all NZNO members, regardless of where they work. The gains for public sector NZNO members on the journey to fair pay--and it has been a rough road sometimes--have been hugely significant in just over one year. Nurses and caregivers in the private sector deserve the same recognition of their real value, complexity and sheer hard work. We will fight to ensure that happens.

Reference

(1) Private Hospitals' Association (2005) Paper presented to the Disability Support Services Funding Working Party.