Nurses pay equity talks may need urgent resuscitation after the Health Minister gave their unions a very public serve.
Andrew Little claims they've back tracked on a binding commitment to put a settlement to their 40,000 members for a vote.
But the Nurses Organisation sort a legal review of the proposed deal after some nurses were upset payments would not be backdated to 2019 as expected.
Health Minister Andrew Little has told Checkpoint the nurses' union backtrack on a pay settlement is "peculiar" and he has no more money to put into the deal.
"As I understand it, they consider there is somehow a binding commitment to pay backpay to December 2019. There is no agreement on backpay to 2019.
"What's surprising is given the pretty much three years it took to get to a settlement. There's two, two and a half years of technical work. Then a few months of negotiation, and agreement reached in December last year. I'm just surprised that it's taken until last night to let the DHBs and myself know that they no longer think that it's lawful. There's something peculiar about that.
"I think it's fully lawful. And I think everybody's been through the process. And in the end, as with every negotiation and agreement is reached across the table, people shake on it, they draw it up, they sign it, that's binding.
"After literally decades of being underpaid on the basis of a discriminatory approach, we've not only changed the law to enable us to break through that but we've actually worked the hard yards, worked with the nurses and the PSA on this occasion as we are without the unions, to actually breakthrough, do the technical stuff, the hard stuff and reach agreement on rates of pay that are not based on that discrimination. it's historical. what has happened has been historical, and it will result in a significant increase in pay for nurses."
