Nurses pleased, but ...

Press, 24 December 1985, Page 3

Nurses pleased, but ...

PA Wellington Nurses are pleased with their wage settlement but say it will not solve the problem of staff shortages. The Nurses’ Association industrial officer Mr Neville Taylor said yesterday there had been no negative feedback from members to details of the wage settlement announced at the week-end. The settlement will see most staff nurses get wage rises of between 14 and 19 per cent on top of the State annual general adjustment of 15.5 per cent. Charge nurses will get increases of between 16 and 25.5 per cent on top of the adjustment.

But Mr Taylor said that while the settlement would help the recruitment and retention problems facing employers, it would not entirely ease staff shortages. Much would depend on what happened in Australia where nurses were now in wage negotiations. Nursing shortages there meant some employers were offering accommodation to nurses.

Mr Taylor said that if people had the impression New Zealand nurses were marginally better off than their Australian counterparts, this was just "not true and they had better wake up.”

Nurses here had reacted positively to the setting up of a working party to look at their clinical career structure. This would do a lot to keep nurses in the system if any changes.recommended were successful.