Ambulance staff strike action underway

St John Ambulance will operate at 70 per cent throughout the country for the first time ever as staff began their strike action on Tuesday.

The workers say they have been disappointed to be taking this unprecedented action, but they were “fed up” with the lack of progress after 19 months of pay negotiations.

Tuesday’s strike started at 4am and will end at 4am on Wednesday. Another strike is planned for Saturday and Sunday.

Although they are an integral part of New Zealand's health services, Hato Hone St John receives 82 per cent of its funding through government organisations. However, it isn't government-owned. It gets the rest of its funding through donations, fundraisers, and training programmes.

Watch Ambulance Association's Mark Quinn's interview.

More than 2500 Union ambulance officers, part of the New Zealand Ambulance Association (NZAA) and First Union, will strike for the first four hours of their shift, including at peak hours when there will be significant delays to less critical callouts.

NZAA spokesperson Mark Quinn told Pacific Mornings’ William Teriti that the decision to initiate a strike wasn't an easy one, adding this was the only way to bring attention to the ambulance funding situation.

“This decision has been taken lightly by ambulance officers and communications staff. They realise the implications of it.

“But they are equally, this is how they are feeling and how angry they are that they are not being seen as valued by both Health New Zealand politicians and St John this is the level of frustration.

“It's the first time ever in the history of the ambulance service St John that we've had to take this kind of action but we feel that it's the only way to try and get some publicity around it and to show and hopefully some public support.”

Quinn says the strikes will continue to happen until the pay dispute is resolved, adding the strikes demonstrate how frustrated staff are with the situation.

Emergency calls will still be taken, Quinn says but requests with less urgency classified as green and orange by St John may suffer significant delays.

“The ambulance is still responding to true emergencies under the triple one system, but for the low acuity, there may be a significant delay in getting an ambulance, and that's where we say that the greens and oranges that are classified by St John.”

Quinn said the strike action came after negotiations with St John over pay disputes, and even with recent funding from Health New Zealand it wasn't enough.

“It's happening because we have now been nine months in negotiations with St John over the current pay dispute up to last week St John's saying they had no money to pay staff for any pay increases and it was only last week that they received some money from House New Zealand which fell way short of expectations and meeting inflationary pressures.”

Quinn has called out NZ First who campaigned on bringing government funding for St John to 95 per cent but have yet to fulfil the party promise.

“Winston Peters and New Zealand First were happy to bring that up in the pre-election, but they've gone very silent on it, and Shane Reti is another one who's gone very silent on it. And we're asking for help now.”

An ambulance service cannot be run partially by charity, Quinn said, especially now that New Zealand is facing a financial crisis.

“The reality is you can't run an ambulance service based partly on charity, which is what's currently being expected. And certainly, somebody's been caught with their pants down in terms of the financial implications, particularly through an economic crisis. And so we're asking for this to be rectified. And between Health New Zealand and St John to come to the party to resolve the pay dispute.”

Watch First Union's Faye McCan's interview.