Private hospital staff fear loss of week-end rate

Press, 11 October 1985, Page 2

Private hospital staff fear loss of week-end rate

An abuse of a “basic precept of New Zealand society” has contributed to a breakdown in the second day of conciliation talks for the national private hospital domestic workers’ award, according to a union official, Mr Martin Moodie. “The private hospital employers’ wage offer included a vicious demand that all week-end penal rates be abolished,” Mr Moodie said yesterday after the talks had been adjourned in Christchurch. He is the acting Canterbury secretary of the Hotel, Hospital and Restaurant Workers’ Union.

“The penal rate condition 1 would effectively mean a pay cut for week-end workers in a seven-day industry,” Mr Moodie said. The assistant secretary of the Northern Hotel, Hospital and Restaurant Workers’ Union, Mr Mark Gosche, said that the employers were asking workers to give up rights they had achieved for many years.

“A large proportion of these employers are church organisations which are attacking the moral standards of workers saying it does not count if you work on a Sunday. This is an attack on an industry dominated by women workers who value their work.”

The employers’ claims of not being able to pay their workers any increased rates were wrong, Mr Gosche said.

“We find that an incredible claim with private hospitals in Auckland, for example, booming. Accident compensation State-funded cases are pouring into private hospitals and so is Government support.” The employers had promised the same wages to private hospital workers as workers in public hospitals in their previous award statements, Mr Moodie said. “The Arbitration Court has endorsed this and now the employers have gone back on their word,” he

said. “They have told us that past promises of parity are worthless.

“Worse still, in return for dropping the penal rate, the employers offered a pay increase of 16.67 per cent which brought the base rate to $256 a week, still well below what we will get in the coming public hospital award in November. We will report back to our members and are confident of their full support.” In Christchurch, members are due to meet at 2 p.m. on Sunday.

Mr Peter Cullen, secretary of the Wellington Hospital Workers’ Union, said the union was reluctant to go to the Arbitration Court over the matter because of“frustrating” previous dealings with the court.

Mr Moodie said that the employers’ condition of dropping week-end penalty payment might be delaying tactics so as not to have a wage settlement which would provide a lead for other groups, to follow.

The lowest 40-hour-week wage for union members working in private hospitals is $219.43 gross, and the highest $241.37 gross. The lowest 'wage for similar workers in public hospitals is $230.11 and the highest $339.02. The union wants a 7 per cent wage rise followed by

a further rise in January once the public hospital award is settled.

The employers’ advocate, Ms Jacinta Ward, said yesterday that the talks broke down because of an “apparently premeditated walk-out by the union.

“The formula we put to the union about wages and week-end penal rates was rejected on the first day of talks, so the employers withdrew it,” she said. “Instead the employers were willing to negotiate on the basis of the current award provisions.

“The union’s walkout is unfortunate, unhelpful, and shows .a lack of concern for patient care. There is an unwillingness by the union to negotiate and it has shown no flexibility with its claims.”

Both parties would be required to enter a chambers hearing of the Arbitration Court in about three weeks, Ms Ward said.

“The Court then has a number of options which it can recommend to the parties, one of these feeing voluntary arbitration. This course has been chosen by the union in the past and usually takes time. “We reject that the employers are trying to use delaying tactics. We have been sincere in our efforts to continue the talks.”