Redwood Lodge members continue strike action.

NEW ZEALAND Life Care, the owner of Rotorua's Redwood Lodge, has rejected an NZNO offer of mediation. NZNO made the offer in an attempt to resolve a dispute over safe staffing and wages at the rest-home and hospital

Around 65 nurses, caregivers, cleaners and laundry staff at the 100-bed rest-home and hospital were on strike for three days in late November. Another 24-hour strike was held in early December after New Zealand Life Care refused the mediation offer and two eight-hour walkouts were scheduled for later in the month.

NZNO organiser Shane Vugler said collective agreement negotiations began in March. Three months of negotiations and one session of mediation had resulted in some movement but not enough to prevent strike action. Most staff are on around $10 an hour and NZNO is claiming a range of rates from $10 to $12.50 an hour, based on experience and qualifications. New Zealand Life Care has offered to increase rates for most staff to $10.30 to $10.60 an hour. But it has steadfastly refused to consider NZNO's safe staffing claim. NZNO wants to see 3.8 hours of direct care per shift for every hospital resident and 2.2 hours of direct care per shift for every rest-home resident. "New Zealand Life Care has made it clear it is not going to institute proscribed staffing levels."

Vugler said staff were united and were receiving strong public support. "But many of them are from low-income families and four days without wages is hard on them."

Late last month New Zealand Life Care stated a consultant's report commissioned and funded by some aged-care providers set the level of wages as a percentage of income for rest-home residents at 46 percent. It is using this report to justify why it doesn't need to increase present smiling levels, Vugler said.

"New Zealand Life Care should listen to its staff and residents, reputable providers and the Ministry of Health who agree with NZNO that labour costs in rest-homes should be around 66 percent of funding and in hospitals around 72 percent," Vugler said.

He also said the dispute demonstrated that the Ministry of Health's minimum staffing levels for rest-homes and hospitals were "an absolute joke. They are out of date and way too low. The Ministry and the Government need to .set minimum staffing levels in their funding contracts with aged-care providers."

He also said the Redwood Lodge situation showed the Ministry's accreditation process was "seriously flawed". It concentrated on policies and protocols but not on what was happening on the ground and there was no ongoing monitoring by the Ministry.

Vugler is also concerned that New Zealand Life Care is using corporate structures to hide its level of profitability in the aged-care sector. "That approach short changes staff and compromises residents' care," he said.

"NZ Life Cafe's approach to this dispute shows its first priority is its profit margin, not the safety and wellbeing of elderly residents, as they are claiming. Our nurses and caregivers on the other hand are putting the future wellbeing of residents first--that is what their industrial action is all about."

One of the three-person negotiating team, enrolled nurse Bev Rodgers, said each day of strike action was harder financially for the workers "but we want to stick in there. We don't want to give up. They want to take our $5 a shift weekend allowance off us but we are sticking together and fighting."

She said residents and their families supported the workers. "We've had two residents out on the picket line today," she said during the 24-hour strike on December 2. "They see how flat out we are."

She hopes New Zealand Life Care will agree to mediation. "The situation at the moment is not doing anybody any good."

Workers at Redwood Lodge gained their first collective agreement last year after a successful recruitment drive by Rodgers and caregiver Tania Heberley.