New Zealand: Vote no to sellout of Wellington bus drivers! Form rank-and-file committees!
The Socialist Equality Group calls for Wellington bus drivers to decisively reject the new draft collective employment agreement (CEA), hatched by NZ Bus and the Tramways Union.
This is the fourth deal presented to bus drivers since April. Most recently, on June 23, drivers rejected a sellout agreement backed by the union, which would have reduced overtime and weekend penalty rates, scrapped taxi allowances and lengthened the standard broken shift working day from 11 to 12 hours.
Wellington drivers picketing during a lockout by NZ Bus on April 23. (Credit: WSWS Media)
New Zealand nurses’ union cancels strike after pay offer
The New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) announced Friday that it had cancelled a strike notice for July 29, following talks with the country’s 20 District Health Boards (DHBs). Some 30,000 nurses and health care assistants struck on June 9, after rejecting a derisory pay offer of just 1.38 percent and voted for three further nationwide strikes on July 29, August 19 and September 9.
Nurses march through Wellington during the June 9 strike. (Photo: WSWS Media)
The DHBs’ original offer was a pay cut relative to inflation (which is 3.3 percent) and contained nothing to address the staffing crisis in hospitals. The Labour Party-led government has announced a three-year wage freeze for the majority of public employees, including healthcare workers and teachers. It is imposing severe austerity measures to make workers shoulder the burden of the economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and New Zealand
16 July 2021
India: Punjab public sector workers strike for better pay
Workers from several Punjab state government departments stopped work for two days on July 8 in protest over the Sixth Pay Commission’s recommendations. The action followed demonstrations by public sector workers and doctors on June 23 and a week-long strike by the Punjab State Ministerial Services Union on June 22 over the commission’s recommendations.
Mass Media Employees and Officers Association members from the Health Department’s mass media wing stopped work and demonstrated on July 8. The association complained that their demand that workers in jobs with the same educational qualification be paid the same as workers in the Public Relations Department had been ignored.
Nurses Union cancels strikes, will take pay offer to members stuff.co.nz - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from stuff.co.nz Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Health Minister Andrew Little says strike notices have been lifted. ”In addition to that there is a commitment to conduct a ministerial review of the safe staffing accord and the implementation care capacity demand management that has not been consistently rolled out,” he said. The Ministry of Health and the nurses union would run a recruitment campaign to fill the 1450 nursing vacancies across the country, Little said. “We need to get nurses into those roles.” Nurses union organiser David Wait said the new offer was “significantly different” from the previous offer but nurses will now get to decide whether it was acceptable or not.