IHC staff protest against low wages

Nelson IHC staff who belong to the Service and Food Workers Union walked off the job yesterday to stage a protest demanding more pay.

They demonstrated outside Idea Services' Main Rd Stoke office calling for IHC's 2 per cent government funding increase to be passed on to them.

The protest, involving seven workers at Green St and Natalie St Idea day base offices, lasted for about an hour and attracted many supportive toots from passing drivers.

The workers' base wage is $14.20 an hour.

Community support worker Gina Anderson said she was striking because she wanted her pay increase. "We've got the same costs to survive as well as IHC say they do," she said.

The striking workers co-ordinate daily programmes for intellectually disabled people after they leave the residential homes where they spent the night.

Mrs Anderson said the work she and her colleagues did was crucial for the intellectually disabled service users they cared for.

"We advocate their needs, we speak up when they can't or when they're too shy to."

Nelson SFWU organiser John Cumming said there were about 20 vocational staff in Nelson-Tasman, and and it was the first year that IHC had not handed its funding increase on to its staff.

IHC has said it had refused to pass on the Government's funding increase because of increased costs for its organisation.

In a statement, it said it was looking to the Government for a solution to the wage demand by the Service and Food Workers Union.

IHC chief executive Ralph Jones said the Government was "giving with one hand but taking it away with the other". He said the government increase was only 1.2 per cent this year, but it had imposed cost increases in excess of that for KiwiSaver and ACC payments.

"The union is out of step with most New Zealand workers who are feeling the effects of the tough economic climate," said Mr Jones.

"Their industrial action is failing to reach an accord with many union members who understand the situation and simply want to hold on to their jobs."

He said just over 50 per cent of IHC's workforce was unionised and it was "business as usual" at IHC.

Idea Services area manager Joanna Sarrell was unavailable for comment.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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