Members of the Service and Food Workers Union picket Dunedin Hospital yesterday. Photo by Peter McIntosh.
Senior organiser Steven Briggs said the union had been in negotiations since about June to increase their pay, which started at $14.62 an hour.
However, the Government was enforcing a wage freeze.
The group joined about 2700 other workers at 35 public hospitals across the country for the two-hour stopwork meeting.
Northern region secretary Jill Ovens said a resolution calling for a "mass protest stoppage of up to 24 hours in November involving as many public sector and publicly funded workers as possible" was strongly supported.
