12th May, 2021
Midwife Pam Colbert has put her skills out for all to see on You Tube. No, not the skill as a midwife but her other skill as a song writer and musician with her band…
9th March, 2021
MERAS has filed in the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) over the DHBs’ decision to unilaterally exclude general practitioners as a potential comparator in the process to resolve the union’s pay equity claim. MERAS Co-leader (Industrial)…
18th February, 2021
MERAS Co-Leader Jill Ovens spoke to The Project on 17 February about the need to improve the critical shortage of midwives in New Zealand. https://meras.midwife.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2021/02/Jill-Ovens-The-Project-21-Feb-2021.mp4
7th December, 2020
MERAS is now a signatory to the highest level engagement between CTU unions, the Ministry of Health, Minister of Health, and DHBs CEs, GMsHR and Chairs. The Minister of Health Hon Andrew Little and senior…
19th October, 2020
Sarah Pallett, newly elected MP in the Christchurch seat of Ilam, is the only current midwife in Parliament and brings the total number of union MPs in the Labour Caucus to 15. Sarah is a…
9th October, 2020
MERAS organiser Karen Gray (left) and ARA Midwifery lecturer Sarah Pallett (right) enjoyed a night of politics hosted by Canterbury Unions on Wednesday, 7 October. The event gave workers the opportunity to ask questions of…
5th September, 2020
Palmerston North Hospital’s delivery suite is struggling to put enough midwives on duty to look after women giving birth. As reported by Stuff on 5 September, the hospital is using extra nurses and health care assistants…
28th August, 2020
DHBs are looking to the United Kingdom to recruit midwives in the face of a severe shortage of midwives which is exacerbated by falling numbers of students studying midwifery. Jill Ovens, co-leader of MERAS, the midwifery…
24th August, 2020
“It was like we had little control over our own bodies.” That’s how one Auckland woman describes her experience of childbirth in the 1970s and 80’s That all changed 30 years ago (22 August 1990),…