The strike included about 70% of the country’s medical lab industry, with about 200 workers in the Otago-Southland region.
Medical lab scientist and Apex union delegate Leah Pringle said she would very much like ‘‘to get paid the same as Te Whatu Ora colleagues for doing exactly the same job’’.
Ms Pringle said medical lab workers in the private sector, including Dunedin's Awanui Labs, made a fraction of what people employed by the public sector made. Many in the industry were on minimum wage.
‘‘It's a very big discrepancy since they got their settlement about 18 months ago. I’ve probably lost out on $50k.’’
Private employers had ‘‘fallen behind’’ in terms of wages and workers were protesting to get pay parity.
‘‘Phlebotomists can get paid more working the checkouts at Countdown than they can taking your blood,’’ Ms Pringle said.
‘‘Why would you stay in a high-risk job when you could do much lower-risk work for more money? We’re basically running on skeleton staff.’’
She said those workers that were left were stuck in a cycle of covering more shifts, working multiple days in a row to keep things running and training staff, just to repeat the cycle as people burnt out and quit.
‘‘People are taking early retirement so they can get out because it is just so exhausting.’’
She hoped by having matched pay between the public and private sectors, staff would be incentivised to stay.
‘‘We're spending half our time training rather than actually doing the work that impacts on patients. I mean, 100% of cancer diagnoses need a medical laboratory scientist.’’
The strike continues tomorrow.
