Nursing pay equity rates to be paid early next year

We are pleased to announce that new pay equity rates for our nursing workforce will be paid in the first quarter of next year.

As we advised on Monday, Te Whatu Ora had asked the Employment Relations Authority for an interim order to pay the rates that were part of the Agreement in Principle with the nursing unions.

It will include lump sum payments of $3,000, in addition to $7,000 pay equity lump sums already paid to nurses who are members of the NZNO and NZPSA. Nurses who haven’t received any lump sums will be paid $10,000. The payment will be pro-rated.

The new pay equity rates will be effective from 7 March 2022.

We’ll be working through the details and the questions many people might have and will provide an update soon.

This doesn’t change the unions’ legal challenge, but we didn’t think it was right that nurses should have to wait for a long and complex legal case before getting the pay equity rates we’d already agreed.

We are grateful the ERA considered our application so quickly and our payroll teams have already started planning to implement the new rates.

Coordinating more than 20 different payroll system is a complex task, but we’re pulling out all stops and putting extra people on so the new rates can be paid as soon as possible.

What this means is that our nurses will be on par - dollar for dollar - with their Australian counterparts with the biggest increases going to where there’s been the biggest undervaluation.

Most importantly, we’re addressing a legitimate claim from a workforce that has been undervalued for too long.

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