Te Whatu Ora bargaining 2024

The Te Whatu Ora / NZNO Collective Agreement negotiations are underway.

We need safe staffing in health care.

We need pay and conditions that value nurses, midwives and HCAs.

Safe Staffing Strikes, 17-30 November 2025

NZNO members at Te Whatu Ora voted strongly in favour of Safe Staffing strikes between 17-30 November. These involved refusing redeployment, refusing to work additional hours or shifts, and refusing to agree to changes to their roster proposed by Te Whatu Ora.

More information about the Safe Staffing strikes here.

Te Whatu Ora 23 October 2025 strike

NZNO Te Whatu Ora members voted strongly in favour of taking national strike action from 1100-1500 on Thursday 23 October 2025. The decision to take this further strike action showed that Te Whatu Ora members are committed to achieving their goals raised in bargaining around enforceable safe staffing and patient safety as well as pay increases that don’t mean a pay cut.

More than 100,000 public sector workers including teachers, principals, support staff, doctors and allied health have also voted for strike action on Thursday 23 October. Te Whatu Ora nurses, midwives and health care assistants stood shoulder to shoulder and call on the Government to invest in public services so we have the resources to fix understaffing in our hospitals, schools, fire stations and other essential public services.

Lobbying to fix understaffing at Te Whatu Ora

Alongside industrial action, NZNO members are taking action to raise awareness of the issues in the health system by lobbying heir local MPs and sharing their stories in their communities. Health is now the second most important issue in the eyes of the NZ public and the work NZNO members have done to raise awareness of the issues in the health system is a huge part of the pressure the Government has felt on this issue. WE're calling on MPs to support our solutions to fix understaffing.

NZNO’S SOLUTIONS TO FIX UNDERSTAFFING AT TE WHATU ORA

Staff-to-patient ratios

We need Te Whatu Ora to agree to work with NZNO on a research program which will provide the evidence base needed to support the introduction of ratios alongside CCDM, thereby supporting safe staffing into the future.

Recommit to CCDM for safe staffing

We need Te Whatu Ora to reconfirm its commitment to the CCDM programme and, in particular, complete the FTE calculations they stopped from October 2024. The FTE calculations determine a safe staffing level, based on patient need and need to be redone each year to make sure staffing levels are right.

The full employment of new graduates

New Zealand has one of the highest proportions of Internationally Qualified nurses in the OECD and we rely heavily on these nurses to support our health system. Meanwhile, less than half of the most recent new graduate group were offered places in the new entry to practice programme by Te Whatu Ora. The first year of practice is incredibly important for new graduates to cement their learning and remain in the profession, or in New Zealand.

Click here to download the lobbying toolkit (Sept 2025 version).

Te Whatu Ora 2 and 4 September 2025 strikes

NZNO members at Te Whatu Ora voted strongly to strike from 0700-2300 on 2 September and 4 September.

Te Whatu Ora strike 30-31 July 2025

NZNO members at Te Whatu Ora voted strongly to take strike action on from 9am on 30 July to 9am on 31 July. Following a round of stop work meetings, Te Whatu Ora said they had an improved offer. However, events led to an offer that was worse, suggesting there had been political interference in our bargaining.

Te Whatu Ora offer 30 June 2025

We received an offer from Te Whatu Ora to settle your collective agreement bargaining. Te Whatu Ora have said this offer was only available if ratified by members by 31 July.

Click here to see the offer, including a comparision with the May 2025 offer.

Te Whatu Ora initially invited us to a meeting to discuss the offer, which your bargaining team accepted. Te Whatu Ora then withdrew that invitation only wanting to receive written questions or points of clarification. In our view this amounts to a breach of good faith.

Instead of being an improved offer, Te Whatu Ora have withdrawn parts of the offer they made in May 2025 (which members voted to reject). It is also worse than their position in bargaining last week.

On 4 July we sent our proposal for settlement to Te Whatu Ora.

Among other things, we included a process for Te Whatu Ora to immediately recruit into roles shown as necessary through the CCDM programme, reinstated the requirement for Te Whatu Ora to consider the results of the research into staffing ratios, included a cost-of-living increase, an additional increase for those in Designated Senior roles and improvements to Kiwisaver. You can see OUR proposal here.

Te Whatu Ora bargaining

Preparation for bargaining started in late 2023, involving a claims and bargaining team selection process with a focus on member involvement and transparency of the process.

We initiated bargaining on September 3 2024, following the 60 day initiation window opening on 31 August, aiming to begin bargaining as quickly as possible.

Bargaining began on September 5, with a ‘pre-bargaining’ session and we subsequently met for 16 days of bargaining, including mediation aimed at settling the agreement and
avoiding strike action.

Following bargaining and mediation, we applied to the Employment Relations Authority for facilitated bargaining, which occurred in late March / early April.

The Employment Relations Authority provided it’s recommendations in April. These recommendations are not binding on the parties, neither members, nor Health NZ are required to agree with the recommendations. We immediately shared the recommendations to members and met with Health NZ to discuss the offer they would make. On 12 May Health NZ provided an offer to members, which we will go through at the ratification meetings.

Following the ratification meetings, we will run an online ratification ballot, where members will decide whether to accept, or reject the Health NZ offer. That decision will be decided by a majority vote of members who are entitled to vote, and who do vote.

After eight months of bargaining, Health NZ have presented an offer which:

Does not cover increases to the cost of living;
Have not guaranteed that clinical need, as determined by the safe staffing programme CCDM, will take priority when determining staffing levels;
Have not agreed to offer permanent, full employment to new graduates, despite having done so in the past and despite New Zealand not training enough nurses to meet our own workforce needs.

Ratification documents

Support the legal action for safe staffing at Te Whatu Ora

In November last year, NZNO filed a lawsuit against Health New Zealand arguing that the provision of safe staffing and a safe and healthy workplace is a right for all employees under our collective agreement and that Health New Zealand has breached the agreement by not providing a sufficient number of experienced staff in our hospitals.

We are now asking members around the motu that are also experiencing chronic short staffing to get involved in raising additional legal actions for each hospital. This will contribute to our ongoing collective bargaining campaign to secure enforceable, culturally appropriate nurse-to-patient ratios by enforcing our right to safe staffing under our collective agreement.

We have created an online form where members can draft their own powerful impact statements. These impact statements will form the basis of future legal actions which NZNO can file against Health New Zealand.

NZNO ward meetings and District Committee meetings

NZNO ward meetings were held 29 January - 18 February to decide next steps for bargaining, including discussing ideas for continuing to build and maintain pressure through industrial action.

From 18 February - 6 March District Committee meetings will be held in every Te Whatu Ora district to consider the feedback from the ward meetings and to make recommendations for industrial action.

The goal for bargaining remains the same - to win an offer that advances the core goals for bargaining as identified by members, that is, safe staffing and a fair deal.

December 2024 Te Whatu Ora strikes

Between November 11-15 NZNO members employed by Te Whatu Ora in roles covered by the collective agreement voted in a secure online strike ballot to hold an eight-hour nationwide strike on December 3 followed by rolling district strikes between December 9 and 20.

The December 3 strike was a complete withdrawal of labour from 11am to 7pm at every place in New Zealand where Te Whatu Ora provides health and hospital services. This was followed by rolling district strikes around the country between December 10 and 19, from 1pm to 5pm.

Click here for more information about the December Te Whatu Ora strikes.

2024 Bargaining Team

Click here for information about our bargaining team.

2024 Bargaining Updates

Click here to read updates from the bargaining team. These will be posted after each day of bargaining.

They will also be posted in the NZNO/Te Whatu Ora Facebook group.

Claims for the 2024 bargaining

- View the endorsed claims here.
- The claims that we will take into bargaining were decided through a democratic process. Claims meetings were held 8-19 April. Online claims endorsement meetings were held during the week of 22-26 July. The claims endorsement ballot ran from 29 July to 5 August.

Action for safe staffing on Bargaining Initiation Day 30 August 2024

On Friday 30 August we took action for safe staffing to show Te Whatu Ora that NZNO members are standing up for safe staffing and a fair deal in 2024. 30 August was the day NZNO initiated bargaining for the 2024 Te Whatu Ora collective agreement negotiations. The collective agreement expires on 31 October which makes Friday 30 August the earliest date we can legally initiate for the next round of bargaining.

See photos from Initiation Day Actions.

Timeline of the Te Whatu Ora / NZNO Collective Agreement bargaining
Nov 2023	Meetings to launch 2024 bargaining campaign
Feb 2024	Bargaining team selected
April 2024	Claims meetings
May/June 2024	Member campaign actions focused on safe staffing
July 2024	Meetings to endorse claims for bargaining
30 August 2024	Initiate for bargaining (earliest possible date)
September 2024	Bargaining dates with Te Whatu Ora
31 October 2024	Current CA expires
November 2024	Nationwide stop work meetings
11-15 November 2024	Online strike ballot
3 December 2024	National Te Whatu strike
10-19 December 2024	Rolling Te Whatu Ora strikes
29 January - 18 February 2025	Ward meetings to discuss next steps for political, legal and industrial action
18 February - 6 March 2025	District committee meetings to make recommendations for industrial action
April 2025	Facilitation between NZNO and Health NZ
3 - 13 June 2025	Mass stop-work meetings
30 June	Ratification offer received from Health NZ
30-31 July	National 24 hour strike
2 and 4 September	National strikes 0700-2300
23 October	National strike 1100-1500
17-30 November	Safe Staffing strikes

November 2023 union meetings and launching our 2024 bargaining campaign

38 paid union meetings for Te Whatu Ora members were held right across Aotearoa in the week of 27 November-1 December 2023.

In the meetings Te Whatu Ora nurses, midwives and HCAs came together to:

Tell the new government we expect them to deliver on fixing the nursing shortage crisis
Understand how we will continue the fight for safe staffing in 2024 including the role of ratios
Launch our 2024 Te Whatu Ora bargaining campaign

Media coverage of the meetings

Nurses begin fresh round of campaigning over pay and conditions
RNZ, Newstalk ZB, Newshub, Otago Daily Times, 1 News, New Zealand Herald, PMN, Northern Advocate, 27 November 2023

Nurses to campaign over pay and conditions
RNZ Audio, 27 November 2023

Aim is to put pressure on Te Whatu Ora and the new government
RNZ, 27 November 2023

Ratio Justice

Resolving the issue of insufficient staffing levels came through as the key outstanding issue following the ratification of the Te Whatu Ora Collective 2022/23. Members have been saying loud and clear that this needs to be a priority in the renewal of the collective agreement in 2024.

The longstanding problems of staffing have failed to be remedied by actions to date. In particular, while the implementation of CCDM has worked in some areas, there are still many areas where it either cannot be implemented or has not been implemented. This has placed Te Whatu Ora nurses, midwives and HCAs in dangerous situations due to lack of staff and time to do the job properly.

Overseas jurisdictions such as Queensland, Victoria, California, Ireland and British Columbia are addressing the problem of poor and dangerous staffing with the introduction of enforceable nurse-to-patient ratios. The research is clear, these ratios result in better health and safety and job satisfaction outcomes for members and better patient outcomes.

We are exploring staffing ratios that will act as a ‘safety net’, below which staffing and skill mix cannot fall, while CCDM will provide detailed staffing and skill mix which can sit above those ratios. This model is very similar to the Queensland model which is simply minimum enforceable ratios and above those ratios, flexible standards informed by CCDM. This approach keeps what works about CCDM and adds a ‘safety net’ for those areas where staffing is inadequate, or where CCDM is not implemented. This approach is broader than CCDM, covering all areas of practice. In addition, cultural requirements of Māori as patients or nurses will be taken into account in the ratios NZNO takes into bargaining next year.

Over the coming months we will develop and fine tune the ratios claim we will take into bargaining, adding a New Zealand context to what we’ve seen work internationally. There will be many opportunities for member involvement in the development of ‘Ratio Justice’.

Find out more about the Ratio Justice campaign

Enforcing our rights

Te Whatu Ora has made commitments to safe staffing in our collective agreement and has obligations to keep members safe under the Health and Safety at Work Act.

Our collective agreement includes an escalation pathway intended to alleviate acute staffing shortages, which requires direct support from Te Whatu Ora senior management and must include members and delegates. In 2021 Te Whatu Ora agreed to immediately establish and recruit to new positions recommended in annual FTE calculations. We now have another staffing clause which allows us to negotiate staffing levels even where CCDM cannot be implemented.

Over the last year we’ve increased enforcement of our rights, with health and safety reps, supported by members, issuing PIN notices, and even members taking our first ever Health and Safety strike in Tairawhiti.

Next year, alongside member action, we will increase enforcement of our rights.

We are putting Te Whatu Ora on notice – they have made commitments to us, they have obligations in law to provide a safe workplace, we will hold Te Whatu Ora to those commitments and obligations.