Rob Campbell: Former Health New Zealand Chair on 24 hour nurses strike

Belief a breakdown of trust between nurses and leadership is fuelling protests today. 

Tens of thousands of nurses are striking for 24 hours over chronic workforce shortages, withdrawing labour from all Health New Zealand services from 9am. 

Thousands of procedures and appointments have been postponed. 

Former Health New Zealand Chair, Rob Campbell told Ryan Bridge people don't trust general assurances anymore and want to see working safe conditions that are capable of being met. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Nine am, thirty six thousand nurses go on strike. It's
a twenty four hour strike, pay staffing levels, big sticking
points and negotiations. Health New Zealand reckons more than four
and a half thousand plan procedures and specialist appointments will
have to be postponed.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
We'll be running at a very late level of nursing,
the sort of cove you'd expect on a bank holiday
like Christmas Day. So the minimum to provide safe care,
that's what we aim to do.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Rob Campbell is the former I don't know what I
was expecting from the accent, but no, it wasn't that
Rob Campbell's former Health acent here.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hey Rob, good morning Ran Now, don't don't you be
racist or anything about that?

Speaker 1 (00:36):
No, no, no, it's just a lovely Welsh accenter for
a Wednesday morning. But probably the tone doesn't match the
way that nurses are feeling. I would imagine. Can you
tell me, because I've asked the union and I've asked
Health New Zealand, do we have a shortage of how
many nurses are we short in our hospitals right now?

Speaker 2 (00:55):
I can't give you a number, but there's no question
that there's a shortage on Health New Zealand's own safe
staffing levels numbers. There are any number of shifts, some
say up to half which are not properly staffed, so
there's no question there is a shortage of nurses available
in our public hospitals. There are nurses available to fill

(01:16):
those jobs in many cases, but Health News is shall
we say, quite slow to take up many of those opportunities,
so they are running with staffing levels below those which
are ideal, or even ones to which they've previously agreed.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
How much of this do you think can be solved
by increasing the salaries the wages.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
All of the salaries are important to the people, to
the men and women involved as nurses, But actually I
think the bigger issue is one of trust. There's been
a complete breakdown of trust between nurses and many other
health professionals and the leadership and political and administrative of
the health system. And I think that people don't simply

(02:00):
trust general assurances anymore. They want to see rules which
are enforceable so that their working conditions are safe and
capable of being met. So pay is part of it.
But I don't think simply increasing the payoff or will
solve the problem. This has to be solved face to
face with the nurses and the people that they're working for.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
They strike off. I mean, it doesn't matter who's in power,
they strike You know, what do you say to people
who will say, well, you know, you just after more money,
I'm not getting paid more. I mean one percent is
better than no percent.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Well, it looks as if you're on the board of
Health New Zealand you might be in for a bit
of an increase from yesterday's announcement by the government. But
this is not particularly about this current government. There have
been successive governments that have not been dealing with the
issue of how the health workforce is properly treated and
involved in their own workplace. You know, we rely on
these people, the men and women who are nurses. We

(02:55):
rely on them when we're at our most vulnerable, and
it's not reasonable that we take advantage of them in
the ways that we currently do. So somehow that trust
has to be re established, and that's going to be
a process that taps quite some time, in my opinion.
But some steps have to be made by giving assurances
about these safe staffing levels and meeting at least a

(03:15):
wage increase which covers the red of inflation, appears to
be the main trust of the nurse's Paedermont.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
Rob appreciate that. This morning, Rob Campbell, former health ends
in Chia.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
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