Primary Health Care MECA

The Primary Health Care Multi-employer Collective Agreement (PHC MECA) covers around 3500 NZNO members including: registered nurses, practice nurses, midwives, enrolled nurses, health care assistants, medical receptionists and administrators.

 

PHC MECA bargaining 2024

Last year nurses directly employed by Te Whatu Ora won their historic Pay Equity campaign, resulting in Aotearoa’s largest Pay Equity settlement ever and big pay rises for nurses. It took years of campaigning, going on strike during collective agreement bargaining and growing the membership, but they eventually won. It will take a similar effort and extra Government funding to win Pay Equity in Primary Care, and that’s our goal. It’s simply inequitable that primary care nurses will soon be paid almost 20 percent less than our counterparts in hospitals if we don’t close the gap. That’s thousands of dollars a year. So, this year’s Primary Health Care MECA negotiations, as well as our pay equity claim, is about ensuring equal pay for nurses everywhere, regardless of the part of the health system you work in. 

Your input into claims development

The PHC MECA covers more than 3500 NZNO members and is the largest collective agreement in the sector. It means members can unite as a large group to win better pay and condition that simply wouldn’t be possible if they were negotiating worksite by worksite. The MECA expires at the end of June, and we will start bargaining before that. 

Member claims meeting start after Easter

The first step in this year’s negotiations will be member meetings to work out our claims. Claims meetings will be held over the two weeks starting 15 and 22 April either in person or online. We are doing things a little differently this year with NZNO organisers running some meetings in larger sites. We will be in contact with sites that have organiser run meetings to confirm details including date and time. After Easter we will also send the details of online meetings for all other sites. It’s critical as many members join these online meetings and have your say on the claims we put forward, as well as hearing about what it’s going to take to win.  

Click here to view the listing of Auckland claims meetings.

Growing our membership to win

Our membership in Te Whatu Ora grew significantly during the Pay Equity campaign as more nurses joined to support winning a big pay increase. We need to do the same in Primary Care. Now is a good time to talk to any staff in your worksite who are not currently members of NZNO about coming on board in support of our campaign. It’s simple – the more members we have the more power we have in PHC MECA bargaining to get the Government to increase funding to deliver on our claims. We will be sending materials to worksites soon to support recruitment of new members, but in the meantime you can go here to sign up.

 

Proposed Primary Health Care Pay Equity claim

In August 2023 we introduced the idea of NZNO lodging a Pay Equity claim on behalf of our PHC MECA members. This proposal arises from the limitations of always chasing the Te Whatu Ora pay rates by a pay parity mechanism. It's always too hard, too slow, never is full parity and PHC MECA members currently have no way to ensure ongoing full parity. So the proposed way forward is a pay equity claim.  We also need to take on the current funding system to ensure there is sustainable, ongoing funding for rates that keep up with Te Whatu Ora rates.

We have seen large increases to pay rates in the Te Whatu Ora sector as a result of the Nursing Pay Equity claim on behalf of those workers. NZNO believes that lodging a Pay Equity claim on behalf of Primary Health Care workers has the best chance of winning equivalent pay rates across this sector, regardless of employer. This is central to Maranga Mai! based on that nurses should be paid on their skills, knowledge, experience and responsibility rather than who employs them. 'A nurse is a nurse is a nurse'.

Members need to know that this involves the government agreeing to fund it. That's a fight we are willing to take on based on the evidence of the skills, knowledge and responsibility that Primary Health nurses bring to their work.

Our members have made their frustrations clear. We now need to pivot to a new way forward that complements our MECA collective bargaining which we need to continue to do to update pay rates and other terms and conditions.