Nurses to continue industrial action

Press, 2 February 1982, Page 6

Nurses to continue industrial action

Industrial action by nurses at Sunnyside and Templeton hospitals will continue indefinitely and they may intensify their action after February 12.

A meeting between senior officials of the Public Service Association, representing the nurses, the North Canterbury Hospital Board and the Hospital Boards’ Association in Christchurch yesterday failed to settle the dispute, which affects all psychiatric and psychopaedic hospitals. Nurses in most psychiatric hospitals have either begun or threatened industrial action in limited forms. Sunnyside nurses began a ban on some duties at midnight last Thursday, and Templeton nurses put a ban on non-nursing duties last Friday. The P.S.A. representative at Sunnyside, Mr C. A. Bell,

said that Sunnyside Hospital

was 23 nurses short of its establishment,'and 51 short of the minimum staff level recommended by the joint working party of the North Canterbury Hospital Board and the P.S.A. Mr Bell said that the board sub-committee at the meeting refused to give a commitment that the board would recognise the working party’s report and work for its recommendations. The board was not willing to make a joint approach to the Government for more money to pay for the extra nurses needed. . .

Nurses at Templeton and Sunnyside will hold stopwork meetings on Friday to hear a report on the meeting: Mr Bell said that delegates from all psychiatric hospitals would attend a meeting in Wellington on February 12 at which a recommendation would be put that industrial action be intensified. 2

.A spokesman for the Hospital Board said that although the meeting had no real progress, there was agreement on the need for harmonious relations in the hospitals. "In a letter some six months ago, the P.S.A. recognised that the level of staffing enjoyed by hospitals under the control of the North Canterbury board was far in advance of those elsewhere,” said the spokesman.

Lack of finance was the source of the problem. The results of the meeting would be referred to next week’s meeting of the Health Services Committee in Wellington.

The spokesman said that the board would stand by the report of the joint hospital board-P.S.A. working party “in principle.”. The report found that Sunnyside needed another 34 nurses.