This year, our DHB/NZNO MECA campaign has been focused on supporting members to be involved in their bargaining with delegates leading the way.

Delegates have been running claims meetings since early March to allow members to discuss the issues collectively and decide on what is important. We intended to run additional meetings that were not ward-based to ensure members who weren’t able to attend had a chance to be at a claims meeting.

COVID-19 and the response to it are changing things fast, particularly around social distancing and preparations within the DHBs. To ensure all NZNO members have an opportunity to raise claims, we are creating an online survey as an extra way for members to participate. A link to the claims survey will be emailed to all NZNO members covered by the NZNO/DHB MECA.

So far we’ve had 148 delegate run claims meetings around the country. We will use the results from these meetings as a base for the online claims survey, so the survey questions will reflect the claims and issues already put forward by members.

We’re making sure all members have a voice in the claims we take into MECA bargaining, and we look forward to telling you much more about that in the coming days.

Here are the answers to a few questions about our claims and the bargaining for our MECA.

Are all claims meetings cancelled?

If you have organised a ward- or unit-based meeting for your area it can still go ahead, subject to any other restrictions placed on meetings at your workplace. The off-ward meetings organised to ensure all members had an opportunity to attend a meeting are being cancelled.

What happens with the results of the claims meetings which are held?

We will use the meeting results alongside the results of the online survey to create our claims for members to endorse in April.

When will the online survey link be sent to members?

We expect to have the survey ready early next week as it will take a bit of time to create a survey based on the results of the meetings held so far.

Can members fill out the survey if they have already been to a claims meeting?

Yes.