REMUNERATION FRAMEWORK - 2024

The latest STONZ SECA includes a significant revision to the Salary Scales. Historically the salary scale evolved in ways that created disparities & inequities within our workforce. RMOs on lower categories were paid more than those working more hours overall, and RMOs working rosters with a high prevalence of unsocial hours. To fix these it has meant a framework re-design and an application of a differential pay deal that varied for individual members by category, step, and location.

For a small number of members, it did represent a zero pay increase and where this has occurred we have negotiated income protection clauses. The changes made now mean that the new salary scales can be broken down into an hourly rate that stays the same as RMOs change categories.

This new agreement starts to fix some of the historic Pay Scale issues and goes some way toward catching our members up with a decade of decreasing hourly pay, which has been a goal of STONZ for a long time. We recognise that delivering a differential pay rise is significant and not done without due consideration. We thank our members for making the effort to understand the rationale and for their support.

We see this new SECA as being imperfect, but a step in the right direction for the RMO workforce and puts us in a strong position in our next round of bargaining as current disparities would continue to be ironed out, and pay complexity further reduced. The two-year term of the agreement means that we can move the whole workforce forward together in the next bargaining round.

Based on STONZ membership survey data approximately 97% of members received a pay rise and 90% received a pay rise of 14% or higher for the first year and a 18% average increase across 2-years.

STONZ Salaries effective 26 February 2024

Underlying Salary Loadings

Before we could negotiate an hourly rate for the salary categories and roll this out across the salary steps and categories, STONZ first had to rebuild the underlying penal system. Ensuring that when the salary scale is brought right back down to its base hourly rate, all categories receive the same rate and that every hour counts.

The first step to doing this was building a base that was accepted by STONZ and Te Whatu Ora, which recognised some penal hours would be occurring in the higher categories.

*Keeping in mind that when weekday nights are worked the hours you aren’t working during the day are counted for the purpose of the salary scale, so these are also recognised in addition to the night shift hours.

This underlying salary penal system is below.

Key Salary Scale Information

As part of the new SECA, there have been other changes made to the Salary Scales. Please review the full SECA, our summary documents or email support@stonz.co.nz for more information.

Another increase averaging 3% on 24 February 2025.
Urban, Non-Urban, Shift and Non-Shift Scales are all now one scale.
Rural Hospitals will receive an extra 5% loading (see page 22 of the STONZ SECA for the list of rural hospitals).
Non-service increment has been removed (those who have already received the increment already will retain their step).
The bottom step has been removed to move people higher up the scale faster.
Registrars in training who have to step down to a House Officer (or SHO) position will no longer have a significant salary drop and will retain their Registrar salary step for the duration of the time.