Negotiations between the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO), and district health boards (DHBs) have stalled after nurses voted to reject the latest pay offer yesterday.
The New Zealand Nurses Organisation is the union that represents nurses. The DHBs are the organisations that run hospitals.
The strike will go from 11am until 7pm Wednesday the ninth of June.
The nurses who go on strike will participate in protests outside the hospitals. These protests are called picket lines. Traditionally, they are to stop other workers from coming into the place of work, but of course, this can’t happen with hospitals because there are so many people coming and going.
If you need urgent medical attention during the strike, you can still go to hospital, or dial 111. But if your problem is not an emergency, you should call Healthline or your doctor.
Many elective appointments have been postponed. Elective appointments are meetings to get medical treatment that is not essential.
On Thursday, when the strike is over, the union and the DHBs will meet again to continue negotiations. If the offer from the DHBs to the union is again rejected, Nurses will go on strike again.
Nurses say that they are not only striking for better pay, but they also want better working conditions. If working conditions are bad, people will not want to work as nurses, and then there will be a shortage of nurses.
vocabulary:
postpone: put off until a later date, reschedule
union: a democratic organisation to protect workers’ rights
reject: say no to something, refuse
represent: to speak or act for someone else
conditions: the things that affect your job; for example, how many other people you are working with and how much work you have to do
Thanks for this
hello miss Cassidy, just to say that i love eslnews, it is so usefull, the vocab section, the video, everything, i cant help noticing tought your accent, it can sound a bit americanized as i hear the vds, sorry if im bothering xD
Hello Honda! Thank you, and you’re right, I’ve picked up the american ‘r’ from teaching overseas (in Taiwan). I tend to instinctively use it when I’m speaking in formal situations now. I’ve noticed too, that when I’m taking the bus in Auckland, that I can hear a lot of younger people doing the same thing because Auckland is so cosmopolitan, and many international people get confused by New Zealand’s “r-less” dialect.
what a warm reply yes also skedule instead of shedule maybe you could recover your accent i dont know i absolutely adore maori and pakeha accents ;D