Today, the union representing the ambulance workers has announced it’s launching industrial action - indefinitely.
It says St John first said there was no money for pay increases - then did make a pay increase offer, but it wasn't good enough. So the union said no and counter-offered, and every time they've counter-offered, they say St John just refuses to address it.
So as a result, they will still be doing be doing code purple and red call outs, which is cardiac arrest and life threatening stuff. But they are not committing to doing anything else indefinitely.
So basically, until they get a decent pay offer. This could go on for a year, they said.
Can you imagine how much worse this is going to make St John? Because it’s already not flash.
There's a story in the papers today of a 72-year-old guy who called St John to say he was having a heart attack. He knew he was having a heart attack, cause he’d had two before. And they said the ambulance would be an hour or two away because he actually just had a chest infection.
There was also a story just a couple of weeks ago of a 17-year-old girl who died of asthma. Asthma! It's a completely treatable situation, and she died because the operator coded it wrong and sent the ambo crew on a break instead of in to save her life.
Something's wrong here. Part of it is funding, part of it is that we can’t run a life-saving service partly on donations - but it's bigger than that.
Because if you’ve got people incorrectly coding events - quite often - is funding going to fix that?
Anyway, I've got to the point where I've made an alterative plan for if we've got an emergency in the house, I've got a plan for how I'm going to get people to the hospital myself.
Because I don’t think I can rely on St John - and I wonder how many other people have got to that point too.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show HERE - where this article was sourced.
15 comments:
Heather, good point. I would just like to say one thing. I unfortunately watched the news (or 7 sharp) about a month ago and there was a big piece on st John.
In a nutshell my take on it was all about st John going into EV ambulances. The first thing I immediately thought is 'what about the range', to which they countered they would still keep their ice vehicle for the longer range jobs. I very much doubt this and I too am losing trust and faith in this highly woke organization. They never have enough money, so to keep a spare ice vehicle serviced, maintained and full of relevant equipment for the few trips that the ev can't manage is not a cost effective proposition.
Then to prove my allegations of st John being woke, the Chinese st John presenter was banging on about how inclusive the organisation is. Nothing about their training, the types of jobs they go to, the emergencies they are faced with on a daily basis, just how inclusive they are! Go figure!
I'm willing to bet the vast majority of nz'ers don't care who turns up to save them as long as , 1. The bloody ambulances can get there and 2. It doesn't matter if a Chinese, a transgendered a European and 2 maoris medic appears ( you have to have more maoris) turn up as long as they are COMPETENT.
The biggest thing that struck me about this interview was it hardly every mentioned their core function- saving lives. St John is all about going green and employing more gays and maoris . They should now be listed as WOKE imo.
When it's such an important service surely the focus must be saving lives as quickly and efficiently as possible . St John's appear to be so far off track they don't understand their core function imo.
St, John's problems can be sent straight back to Ms Ardern's determined socio-political eugenics programme.
Anyone with half a brain knows that they were effectively bribed by Labour to recieve funding they would have to rename, rebrand and become a thing that no-one recognised as the original St. John Ambulance....
How much money was spent on all that rebranding and re-imaging? How much is spent now in cultural compliance to satiate the unnecessary?
The whispers across the nation are that their public donations have plummeted for the same reasons above.
People do not like seeing a service that pre-dated so many countries and cultures having to changes its ethos to get money from a government bent on an ideology and they sure don't want to feed that beast.
St. John should have said NO to Labour ans telegraphed Labours agenda to NZ.
The of fate of 'Hato Hone' is now written by the lack of St Johns' spine.
They had plenty of money to rebrand to Hato Hone St John. Give the Ambulance Officers the pay rise they deserve.
I wonder how much money St. John wasted on the Maorification of their business. Renaming and all the "treaty centric" b.s.?
Another woke organisation,got on the bandwagon with maori name attached and art on the vehicles.Which maori named organized department is not in dept?
Yep, we just respectfully declined to donate to their latest appeal for the reasons listed in above comments and we told them why. Go woke go broke on steroids! Thanks Labour/Greens/TPM for showing the way to go by stuffing a Country and everything that was good in it.
My wife and I were leaving 400K to St John in our Will for a new ambulance but since all the maori crap started appearing on them we have changed our minds. Kiwialan.
All of the above. We urgently need a solution though. It is ludicrous to have a life and death service dependent on charity. Government must provide a professional ambulance service - fully professionally staffed and paid for.
Their problems are partly of their own making. The fact they can find money to rebrand themselves (which can't have been cheap to do given how much signage etc they have) is not going to get them much sympathy when pleading how broke they are. Why was this necessary anyway? St John's origins date back from the Crusades and there is nothing inherently Maori about this organisation. So why was there a need to give it a Maori identity? I wouldn't donate to any organisation that I think has wasted money unnecessarily.
Interesting, glad I'm not alone here.
Kiwialan, I'm with you mate, there are much better worthy organisation's to donate / leave money to. St John SHOULD be one of them, unfortunately now they are not.
The girls and boys in the ambulances do a brilliant job, every credit to them, and a heartfelt thank you.
As for the woke admin staff, what a hopeless bunch of tossers .
What a waste of money decorating the ambulances with Maori graffiti no, they are not Maori words, they are recently created to satisfy the whims of a very tiny bunch of activists - the worst of them being Jacinda.
Nope, they are no longer getting my contributions.
St John Ambulance are not subject to the Official Information Act, try getting any information out of them regarding policy, crewing, treatment protocols. It's impossible they refuse to answer. It's time the government provided the ambulance services through taxpayer funding. Like the police, the fire service, the health system. St Joke Ambulance is not fit for purpose.
Agree with EP above, with one important rider: It must have new non-woke management - any woke nonsense and the funds will stop.
They forced out the star performers of their organisation with jab mandates and the remainder are too frequently sick to do their jobs. The culture of the organisation ensures it will die. Time to restart truly local alternatives.
In recent correspondence with St John Fundraising, we concluded with "Please do not get us wrong, we admire what the organisation's front line staff do every day for all New Zealanders, the senior management need to to think long and hard about where its priorities lay and frankly wake up. We do not want any response, we have had enough of woke platitudes."
But ... that notwithstanding we received the following response:
"Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback. As we work towards a more equitable Aotearoa New Zealand in terms of health outcomes, we are committed to building an identity and team that reflects the communities we serve.
The inclusion of Hato Hone has been endorsed by both St John International and the Priory Board and we are proud to be the first St John organisation worldwide to do this. While we appreciate that this decision may not please everyone, I want to reassure you that our commitment to delivering the services we are known for has not changed. We continue the important work we deliver every day for all people and communities across New Zealand.
As always, your decision regarding your donations rests with you, and if you would like me to update your preferences in our system to no longer receive fundraising communications from us, please let me know."
Well, this earned the following response: "Okay, Now just what bit of "We do not want any response, we have had enough of woke platitudes" did you not understand? Again no reply required ..."
One thing that really irks about the leftie woke brigade, they simply do not understand that No means No (take a look at Australia and the Voice referendum). As the previous Anonymous comment states: "The culture of the organisation ensures it will die." The coalition better start looking at alternatives, we are sure many frontline staff will happily transfer across.
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