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New Zealand Blood Service Workers and Junior Doctors Hit the Picket Line Once Again to Fight against Pay Disparities and Poor Working Conditions

As before, the ongoing strikes continue to cause delays in critical clinical laboratory blood testing and surgical procedures

After seven months of failed negotiations, New Zealand’s blood workers, clinical laboratory technicians, and medical scientists, are once again back on strike. According to Star News, hundreds of lab workers walked off the job on May 31, 2024, with another longer walkout planned for June to protest pay disparities.

New Zealand Blood Service (NZBS) workers, who are represented by the Public Service Association or PSA (Māori: Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahi), collect and process blood and tissue samples from donors to ensure they are safe for transfer.

“Our colleagues at Te Whatu Ora [Health New Zealand] are being paid up to 35% more than us and we want to be paid too. We want fair pay,” Esperanza Stuart, a New Zealand Blood Service scientist, told Star News.

“The stall in negotiations is largely attributed to a lack of movement from NZBS on the principal issue of parity with Te Whatu Ora laboratory workers rates of pay. There is currently a 21-28% pay differential between NZBS and Te Whatu Ora laboratory workers, despite both groups of workers performing essentially the same work,” NZ Doctor noted.

Health New Zealand is the country’s government-run healthcare system.

The first strike took place on May 31 from 1-5 pm. A second 24-hour strike is planned for June 4. The strikers outlined the rest of their strike schedule as follows:

  • No work outside paid hours (5/29-6/6)
  • Refusal to conduct duties associated with processing AHF [antihemophilic factor] plasma (5/29-6/6)
  • No overtime or extra shifts (6/6-6/19)

The PSA union claims that the pay disparity workers are experiencing is pushing veteran workers out and complicating recruitment of new workers.

New Zealand Blood Service workers and junior doctors are once again back on the picket line to protest wage cuts and pay disparities. “I think it should be a signal that things are not right in our health system when there are multiple groups of workers going on strike simultaneously,” said PSA union organizer Alexandra Ward. Clinical laboratory workers in the US are closely monitoring the goings on in New Zealand as pressure over staff shortages and working conditions continue to mount in this country as well. (Photo copyright: RNZ.)

Clinical Laboratory Worker Strikes Ongoing in New Zealand

This is far from the first time New Zealand lab workers have hit the picket line.

In “Medical Laboratory Workers Again on Strike at Large Clinical Laboratory Company Locations around New Zealand,” Dark Daily reported on a medical laboratory workers strike that took place in 2023 in New Zealand’s South Island and Wellington regions. The workers walked off the job after a negotiated agreement was not reached between APEX, a “specialist union representing over 4,000 allied, scientific, and technical health professionals,” according to the union’s website, and Awanui Labs, one of the country’s largest hospital and clinical laboratory services providers.

And in “Four Thousand New Zealand Medical Laboratory Scientists and Technicians Threatened to Strike over Low Pay and Poor Working Conditions,” we covered a series of walkouts in 2022 sparked by an unprecedented surge in PCR COVID-19 testing that pushed the country’s 10,000 healthcare workers—including 4,000 medical laboratory scientists and technicians—to the breaking point.

This latest strike is likely to cause delays in vital surgeries and risk the nation’s critical blood supply. All of these strikes were spurred on by low pay, negative working conditions and worker burnout. Similar issues have caused labor actions in the United Kingdom’s National Health Service in recent years.  

Junior Doctors Join Blood Service Workers on Picket Line

Blood service workers aren’t the only healthcare employees in New Zealand’s medical community taking action. In May about half of the nation’s junior doctors walked off the job for 25 hours to protest proposed pay cuts, NZ Herald reported.

In a letter to the nation’s public hospitals, Sarah Morley, PhD, NZBS’s Chief Medical Officer, “warned [that] even high priority planned surgeries should be deferred because they did not meet the definition of a ‘life-preserving service,’” and that “only surgeries where there is less than a 5% risk that patients may need a transfusion should be carried out,” RNZ reported.

According to an internal memo at Mercy Ascot, NZBS “did not consider cancers and cardiac operations in private hospitals to be a life-preserving service,” RNZ noted.

The situation may be more dangerous than officials are letting on, NZ Herald noted. A senior doctor at Waikato Hospital told reporters, “There are plenty of elective services cancelled today—clinics, surgery, day stay procedures etc. … And although I can only speak for my department, we are really tight for cover from SMO [senior medical officers] staff for acute services and pretty much all elective work has been cancelled. So, it’s actually pretty dire, and if next week’s planned strike goes ahead it’s going to be worse. I’d go as far as to say that it’s bordering on unsafe.”

The strike did take place, and the junior doctors went back on strike at the end of May as well, according to RNZ.

Support from Patients

Eden Hawkins, a junior doctor on strike at Wellington Hospital told RNZ that patient wellbeing is a top concern of striking workers and that patients have shown support for the doctors.

“When patients have brought it up with me on the wards or in other contexts there seems to be a bolstering sense of support around us, which is really reassuring and heartening because there’s obviously a conflict within ourselves when we strike, we don’t want to be doing that,” she said. Hawkins also makes the argument that striking workers can improve patient wellbeing in the long run. Improvement of pay and conditions could lessen staff turnover and overall improve the standard of care.

New Zealand healthcare workers haven’t been shy when it comes to fighting for the improved working conditions and fair pay. And their problems are far from unique. American healthcare workers have been struggling with worker burnout, pay disparities, high turnover as well. Clinical laboratory and other healthcare professionals in the US would be wise to keep an eye on their Kiwi counterparts.

—Ashley Croce

Related Information:

Fed-Up Blood Service Workers Go on Strike

NZ Blood Workers Plan 24-Hour Strike for Pay Parity

New Zealand Blood Service Laboratory Workers to Strike after 7 Months of Stalled Pay Negotiations

Significant Risk to Blood Supply as Blood Service Lab Workers Strike

Junior Doctors to Strike for 25 Hours, May Postpone Treatments

‘Pretty Dire’ Situation for Patients as Junior Doctors Strike Over Pay Cuts

Junior Doctors Go on Strike Again, More Surgeries Deferred

Medical Laboratory Workers Again on Strike at Large Clinical Laboratory Company Locations around New Zealand

Four Thousand New Zealand Medical Laboratory Scientists and Technicians Threatened to Strike over Low Pay and Poor Working Conditions

Increased Testing Demands from Physicians is Putting New Zealand Clinical Laboratories Under Severe Stress

Following the loss of its histology accreditation, pressure on APS laboratory continues to mount

Government-run healthcare systems around the world often under-invest as demand grows and new healthcare technologies enter clinical practice. One such example is taking place in New Zealand, where public pathology and medical laboratory services are under extreme stress as physician test orders exceed the ability of the island nation’s clinical laboratories to keep up.

“The escalating pressure is complicating what was already a very difficult rescue job at one of the country’s busiest labs—Community Anatomic Pathology Services (APS),” RNZ reported. In 2023, APS lost its histology accreditation after it came to light that lab workers were not only exposed to toxic chemical levels at the facility, but that patients were waiting weeks for test results to return from the lab.

This follows a 2021 report from consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to the Auckland District Health Board in which New Zealand health authorities received warnings to improve pathology systems.

“The service is in crisis mode and, without urgent investment … there is a real risk that it will fail. The changes required are of such urgency that it is recommended that they be placed at the top of the agenda,” the report reads, RNZ reported.

“The size of New Zealand’s economy is restricting what our country spends on health. Health is already the second highest demand on the New Zealand tax dollar,” wrote Andrew Blair, CMInstD (above), then General Manager of Royston Hospital, Hastings, New Zealand, in an article he penned for Jpn Hosp, the journal of the Japan Hospital Association. “The tolerance of New Zealanders would be challenged if a government attempted to increase taxes further to meet the growing demands for expenditure on health, but at the same time the population’s expectations are increasing. This is the challenging situation we face today.” For New Zealand’s clinical laboratories, the demand for testing is increasing annually as the country’s population grows. (Photo copyright: Blair Consulting.)

Increased Demand on APS Leads to Problems

Established in 2015, APS tests thousands of anatomic and tissue samples yearly and is utilized by approximately a third of NZ’s population, according to RNZ.

The big story, however, is that from 2022 to 2023 utilization increased by a third. “The overall increasing demand is greater than the capacity of the service,” Te Whatu Ora (Health New Zealand), the country’s publicly-funded healthcare system, told RNZ.

As planned care increased, public hospitals started outsourcing operations to private surgical centers. A domino effect ensued when all of those samples then made their way to APS. There was an “increased volume of private surgery being carried out by 600 specialists in the region and 2,000 general practitioners, with up to 450 histology cases a day,” RNZ noted, adding, “The backlog has hit turnaround times for processing samples, which had been deteriorating.”

To make matters even more dire, working conditions at the country’s clinical labs is unfavorable and deteriorating, with short staffing, outdated workspaces and equipment, and exposure to dangerous chemicals.

In “New Zealand Clinical Laboratories to Undergo Health and Safety Checks after Workers Contract Typhoid, Others Exposed to Chemicals,” Dark Daily covered how Health New Zealand recently ordered health and safety checks at multiple clinical laboratories in 18 districts across the country. The action is the result of safety issues detected after procedural discrepancies were discovered in separate labs and follows months of strikes by NZ medical laboratory workers seeking fair pay and safe working conditions.

“Conditions got so bad from 2019-2021 that workers were exposed to cancer-causing formaldehyde in cramped workspaces, and flammable chemicals were stored unsafely,” RNZ reported.

While pay increases and safety improvements have provided some relief, the memory of past incidences coupled with increasing delays continue to undermine confidence in New Zealand’s laboratory industry.

Patients Also at Risk Due to Long Delays in Test Results

“We recognize the concern and impact any delayed results can cause referrers and their patients,” Health New Zealand said in a statement, RNZ reported.

Nevertheless, a 2023 article in The Conversation noted that, “38,000 New Zealanders had been waiting longer than the four-month target for being seen by a specialist for an initial assessment.”

These backlogs can be especially deadly for cancer patients. In “Pathology Lab Shortages in New Zealand Are One Cause in Long Delays in Melanoma Diagnoses,” Dark Daily detailed how patients awaiting melanoma diagnoses are experiencing delays upwards of one month due to long waits for test results.

However, according to plastic surgeon and Melanoma Network of New Zealand (MelNet) Chair Gary Duncan, MBChB, FRACS, when patients return to their doctors for test results, those results often have not come back from the medical laboratory. Therefore, the physician cannot discuss any issues, which causes the patient to have to make another appointment or receive a melanoma diagnosis over the telephone, RNZ reported.

“Slow pathology services are unfair to patients. Such delays could result in the spreading of the melanoma to other parts of the body and require major surgery under anesthetic,” dermatologist Louise Reiche, MBChB, FRACS, told RNZ. “Not only will they suffer an extensive surgical procedure, but it could also shorten their life.”

Improvements at APS Underway

Changes are currently underway that may decrease the long delays in test results at New Zealand’s labs. “A business case was being done to set up an electronic ordering system to cut down on manual processing errors,” RNZ reported.

Additionally, “the situation is much improved due to dispersal of work around [the] city and country for now. The teamwork around the region has been a veritable lifesaver,” a source familiar with the work told RNZ.

Construction of a new lab for APS is also allegedly in the works. However, to date no announcement has been made, according to RNZ.

Time will tell if New Zealand’s government can repair its pathology system. News stories showcasing damage caused by lengthy delays in clinical laboratory test results—and the ensuing patient harm due to rationed care in general—continue to reveal the weakness in government-run healthcare systems.

—Kristin Althea O’Connor

Related Information:

Private Healthcare Pushing Auckland Labs to the Brink

Te Whatu Ora Pathology Service Provider Loses Accreditation

NZ’s Health System Has Been Under Pressure for Decades. Reforms Need to Think Big and Long-Term to Be Effective

Meeting Increased Demand

Eight-Week Wait for Skin Cancer Test Results Risking Lives-Doctors

Pathology Lab Shortages in New Zealand Are One Cause in Long Delays in Melanoma Diagnoses

Te Whatu Ora Tight-Lipped on New Auckland Pathology Lab

New Zealand Clinical Laboratories to Undergo Health and Safety Checks after Workers Contract Typhoid, Others Exposed to Chemicals

This comes on top of months of strikes by NZ medical laboratory workers seeking fair pay and safe working conditions

Te Whatu Ora (aka, Health New Zealand, the country’s publicly funded healthcare system) recently ordered health and safety checks at multiple clinical laboratories in 18 districts across the country. This action is the result of safety issues detected after procedural discrepancies were discovered in separate labs.

According to Radio New Zealand(RNZ), Health New Zealand found “significant risks” at some medical laboratories and that “staff at one in Auckland were exposed to toxic fumes, at others two [people] caught typhoid, and delays jeopardized patients’ care.”

“Two lab workers were hospitalized this year after having caught typhoid from samples, one at a private lab in Auckland, and a second at Canterbury Health Laboratories, CHL,” RNZ reported.

A Health New Zealand internal document states there will need to be a “comprehensive” fix to deal with risks present in the island nation’s medical laboratory industry. The assessment states that the organization needs “a more detailed picture of the occupational health and health and safety risks present in our laboratories,” RNZ reported.

“The overall state of the laboratories and the practices they have in place pose an inherited risk from the former DHBs [district health boards] and will likely need a comprehensive approach to addressing significant and/or ongoing risks,” Health New Zealand said in the internal document. “There is growing demand on our laboratories in terms of the volume of the work, which can put pressure on processes, and work is often undertaken in facilities that, over time, may have become not fit for purpose.”

This story as an example of how clinical laboratory staff can be exposed to disease and toxic chemicals when procedures are not diligently followed. It is a reminder to all lab managers that diligence in following protective protocols is imperative.

“Te Whatu Ora is committed to identifying, tracking and mitigating all potential risks and issues within our service until they are fully resolved and no longer identifiable as an issue/risk,” Rachel Haggerty (above), Director, Strategy, Planning and Purchasing, Hospital and Specialist Services, for Health New Zealand told NZ Doctor. Clinical laboratory workers in New Zealand have been striking for fair pay and safe working environments for months. Now, they risk becoming infected by deadly pathogens and chemicals as well. (Photo copyright: NZ Doctor.)

Lab Worker Strikes and Staff Shortages

Community Anatomic Pathology Services in Auckland lost its histology accreditation last year because it was discovered that lab workers were exposed to toxic chemical levels at the facility. In addition, patients were forced to wait weeks for test results from that lab. 

The laboratory was also penalized back in 2017 for how substances were handled when formaldehyde levels in excess of the recommended limits were detected. 

Bryan Raill, a medical scientist at the Counties Manukau District Health Board, said the laboratory workers union in New Zealand believes staff shortages and lab conditions are contributing to the lab woes. Raill is also president of the medical laboratory workers division of APEX, a specialist union representing more than 4,000 allied, scientific, and technical health professionals throughout New Zealand.

“It’s not only your physical environment, being safe there, but you have to be safe in terms of what you do,” Raill told RNZ.

Raill said the two typhoid infections were a red flag and that Te Whatu Ora needs to do more.

“They’re stepping out of the inertia they’ve been bound, so this is a good thing, but it needs to be a wider thing,” he said.

The New Zealand Institute of Medical Laboratory Science (NZIMLS) warned the government months ago that lab technicians were under unsustainable pressure.

“They should look at the other health and safety aspect of the workload and the work environment that staff are working under,” Raill explained in an iHeart podcast. “The person who caught typhoid in Christchurch spent four days in ICU, and there had been a workplace exposure to another pathogen two years earlier and the recommendations that came out of that hadn’t been followed. For example, [the lab workers] were not vaccinated against typhoid.”

IT Implementation Delays also to Blame

Along with strikes and staff shortages, clinical laboratories in New Zealand are also dealing with information technology (IT) issues. Technical problems have delayed some needed lab upgrades by more than a year. 

In addition, “The impacts of new test, surgeries, and medicines/treatments on pathology services have also historically not been understood well nor accounted for and we are considering a number of options, as outlined in the risk register, to manage this,” said Rachel Haggerty, Director, Strategy, Planning and Purchasing, Hospital and Specialist Services, for Te Whatu Ora.

Future efforts will deal with training of lab personnel and focus on ventilation and hazardous substance management. 

Dark Daily has reported extensively on the ongoing problems within New Zealand clinical laboratory industry.

In “Pathology Lab Shortages in New Zealand Are One Cause in Long Delays in Melanoma Diagnoses,” we reported how pathology shortages were causing some patients to wait for more than a month for a melanoma diagnosis. And that the situation is putting cancer patients’ lives at risk.

And in “Medical Laboratory Workers Again on Strike at Large Clinical Laboratory Company Locations around New Zealand,” we covered ongoing strikes by medical technicians, phlebotomists, and clinical laboratory scientists in New Zealand and how their complaints mirror similar complaints by healthcare and clinical laboratory workers in the US.

Clinical laboratory personnel can be exposed to dangerous diseases and toxic chemicals when procedures are not diligently followed. This latest situation in New Zealand serves as a reminder that following protective protocols is imperative in labs worldwide to protect workers and patients.

—JP Schlingman

Related Information:

Te Whatu Ora Finds ‘Significant’ Risks at Labs, Workers Catch Typhoid from Samples, Exposed to Fumes

How to Fix the NZ Laboratory Fiasco

Private Healthcare Pushing Auckland Labs to the Brink

Bryan Raill: Apex Union President Urges Te Whatu Ora to Thoroughly Assess Risk in New Zealand Laboratories

Pathology Lab Shortages in New Zealand Are One Cause in Long Delays in Melanoma Diagnoses

Medical Laboratory Workers Again on Strike at Large Clinical Laboratory Company Locations around New Zealand

Four Thousand New Zealand Medical Laboratory Scientists and Technicians Threatened to Strike over Low Pay and Poor Working Conditions

Pathology Lab Shortages in New Zealand Are One Cause in Long Delays in Melanoma Diagnoses

Similar diagnostic delays due to clinical laboratory staff shortages are reported in other nations as well Critical pathology shortages are causing lengthy delays for clinical laboratory test results in New Zealand, according to a report that states some patients are waiting over a month for a melanoma diagnosis. This situation puts the lives of cancer patients at risk in the island nation.  The Melanoma Network of New Zealand (MelNet) is working to reduce the number of people who develop the...

Medical Laboratory Workers Again on Strike at Large Clinical Laboratory Company Locations around New Zealand

Strike may delay critical blood testing and cause postponement of many surgical procedures

Medical technicians, phlebotomists, and clinical laboratory scientists in New Zealand are once again going on strike for fairer pay in various areas around the island nation. And their complaints mirror similar complaints by healthcare and clinical laboratory workers in the US.

The latest group of New Zealand medical laboratory workers to strike are in the South Island and Wellington regions. They were scheduled to walk off the job on July 28 after a negotiated agreement was not reached between APEX, a “specialist union representing over 4,000 allied, scientific, and technical health professionals,” according to the union’s website, and Awanui Labs, one of the country’s largest hospital and clinical laboratory services providers.

Medical laboratory workers in New Zealand are among some of the poorest paid healthcare professionals in the country’s medical industry, according to New Zealand Institute of Medical Laboratory Science President Terry Taylor who told the New Zealand Doctor that some workers aren’t making a living wage. “These people worked their butts off during the pandemic, so you’d think [Awanui] would be able to come up with a decent offer for its staff,” Taylor said.

On the picket line, New Zealand phlebotomists and medical laboratory technicians express that they do not feel they are being compensated properly. “Without your blood samples, you don’t get your results, you don’t get your treatments, you don’t get admissions, your hospital appointments, your operations,” a phlebotomist told 1News. Clinical laboratory workers in the US who experienced the enormous pressure during the COVID-19 lockdowns would likely agree. (Photo copyright: Otago Daily Times.)

Phlebotomists and lab workers in an around New Zealand are demanding a pay wage to put them on par with healthcare workers in the public sector. According to The Southland Times this raise would average around 23.5%.

However, to date Awanui has only offered the medical laboratory workers a 5% pay increase. The APEX union says that is far below what is acceptable for them.

“It doesn’t even get them to parity with colleagues from the public hospitals, and with inflation the way it is at the moment, it’s effectively a wage cut. So, it looks like these strikes are continuing,” David Munroe, Apex Union Advocacy Lead, told 1News New Zealand.

Patients in these regions can expect to see delays on blood test results as medical laboratories and phlebotomy collection centers close due to the strike action.

Poorest Paid Health Professionals in New Zealand

Last year, Dark Daily reported on a similar strike of New Zealand’s 10,000 healthcare workers—including its 4,000 medical laboratory scientists and technicians—which was scheduled to take place in March.

In “Four Thousand New Zealand Medical Laboratory Scientists and Technicians Threatened to Strike over Low Pay and Poor Working Conditions,” we covered how a last-minute court injunction stopped the mass walkout just 24 hours before it was to begin because of a rise in COVID-19-related hospitalizations.

That strike was also over low pay and poor working conditions.

This year, unionized workers met with Awanui on May 23, but the company declined to make an offer to prevent the strike. A second day of bargaining was scheduled for May 24, but according to Munroe, Awanui refused to show up for negotiations. However, Vicki McKnight, an Awanui General Manager, claimed the company was willing to come to the table but that “APEX declined,” New Zealand Doctor reported.

“To date, there has only been one day of bargaining and the collective agreement has not yet expired, so we are surprised by the comments on potential industrial action after just one day of negotiations,” McKnight told New Zealand Doctor.

McKnight said the parties were unable to come to an agreement because of a significant gap between the claims the parties brought to the bargaining table.

Awanui Pays Out Dividends in the Millions

In reaction to workers taking to the picket line, Awanui Labs acknowledged the strike. The company’s Chief People Officer Emma Kelly told 1News, “We do value our people, and it’s a difficult position to be in strikes for our people, for our patients, for everyone. So, I just want to go into this situation with empathy and respect for all of those involved.”

However, one of the things the New Zealand clinical laboratory workers took particular issue with, in light of Awanui’s 5% offer, was that in the last financial year Awanui paid out $41 million in dividends to its shareholders. According to Munroe, the workers want the company to invest in them—instead of the shareholders.

“They are the business. You can’t run laboratories without scientists, technicians, and phlebotomists. They know it, and it’s about time the company knows it too,” Munroe told 1News.  

The medical laboratory workers plan to remain on the picket line until a deal is made.

Clinical laboratory managers in the US should take heed of what the New Zealand strikers are saying about low pay and poor working conditions—situations mirrored in many nations following the COVID-19 pandemic.   

—Ashley Croce

Related Information:

Blood Test Delays on the Way as Workers Prepare to Strike

Lab Workers Gearing Up for Second Full Strike

Awanui Laboratory Workers to Strike Over Pay Offer

Country’s Biggest Medical Lab Provider Facing Strike Action

‘Can’t Live on These Wages’: Lab Workers Begin Strike Action

Four Thousand New Zealand Medical Laboratory Scientists and Technicians Threatened to Strike over Low Pay and Poor Working Conditions

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