Today, the day this newspaper is published, around 100,000 of us are expected to go on strike. That’s 40,000 teachers, at least 36,000 nurses and 11,500 other healthcare workers including doctors, dentists and social workers (page 10).
For months, teachers have been negotiating for take home pay which isn’t effectively a pay cut, given the cost of living. Because they know and care about educating kids, they are also demanding teacher aids in each classroom, and enough staff to cope with major changes to curriculum-assessment. The Ministry of Education’s own figures show that secondary schools will be short 550 teachers next year.
Health workers are coping with a well-documented crisis in recruitment and retention, in specialty areas including (I find this especially horrifying) specialist palliative care for dying children. Specialists in dermatology and rehabilitation medicine are not publicly available in much of the country. The country needs 1800 more full-time doctors. Nurses are fleeing brutal working conditions in the public health care system for more pay and better conditions overseas, as specialists go private.
Meanwhile, our population grows, along with bottlenecks in doctors’ surgeries and higher fees for patients. As a direct result, New Zealand workers are getting poorer and sicker. Medical Council data reveals the number of patients showing up at Emergency Departments grew 15.5 percent in June 2024 compared with the same period two years previously, while ‘complexity’ (how sick they were before reaching hospital) grew by 16.7 percent.
Our hospitals needed an average of 587 more nurses every shift last year, according to a nurses’ union report which found that forty-five percent of shifts on children’s wards (among others) are understaffed.
“The strike on 23 October by so many essential public service workforces shows the level of frustration workers are feeling,” New Zealand Nurses Association bargaining team member Debbie Handisides told Radio New Zealand (RNZ).
“The coalition government is totally out of touch and refusing to listen. They don’t understand what it’s like to work in a hospital where you are constantly short-staffed. When there aren’t enough nurses, lives are put in danger.”
The unions involved in the strike include the Public Service Association, New Zealand Nurses Association, New Zealand Education Institute, Post Primary Teachers Association and Association of Salaried Medical Specialists.
There will be a march to Parliament, and a march down Queen Street beginning at 12pm open to everyone.
It has been a busy year for protest action. RNZ counts today’s ‘mega strike’ as the 23rd official work stoppage this year.
The Minister of Public Service, Judith Collins, is off to Washington this week. Before she left, she wrote a grumpy letter. Although addressed to “the people of New Zealand”, incredibly, Collins speaks over the heads of striking workers in her first sentence.
“To the patients, students and families affected by this week’s planned strike,” she opens, “The Government regrets the impact on you, your children and your families that is expected on Thursday because of a strike planned by a number of unions.”
In her letter, Collins repeats the old chestnut that “the country is simply not earning enough to meet all these calls”. This is laughably untrue. In the OECD (The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), New Zealand has one of the lowest government spends per capita compared to similar sized economies.
Even if you think that a state economy works like that of a household, (it doesn’t), by underfunding health and education the government is shooting itself in the foot. Ill health and poor education costs the country millions. People who are sick are not only miserable, they pay less tax, and our public health system is making people sicker than they need to be. When a child’s education suffers because her teacher is exhausted, her classmates have high needs and her classroom has no teacher aid, that is the most shameful waste of all.
As Minister of Defence, Collins is off this week to meet US Secretary of War (sic) Pete Hegseth, and, for some reason, Secretary for Homeland Security Kristi Noem.
Will they talk about New Zealand’s planned purchase of five helicopters for $400 million each? Or will they talk about protests?
As Collins wrote her letter, huge ‘No Kings’ demonstrations roiled the US, protesting Donald Trump’s attacks on the cherished norms of American life: democracy, history, arts, science, medicine and the law.
The president responded by posting an AI video of him literally dumping poo on America.
I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies, although some might think a letter attacking teachers and nurses striking for fair pay and safe conditions, while less childish, is nearly as embarrassing.
Striking is, for teachers and healthcare workers, the last resort. As Association of Salaried Medical Specialists executive director Sarah Dalton told RNZ: “I’m really sorry if people will miss out or have delays to their care on Thursday but that happens every single day – and the government refuses to address it.”
• Jenny Nicholls
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