Doctors: Pay offer ‘insulting’
Manawatu¯ doctors have dismissed the latest pay and conditions offer from health officials as ‘‘insulting’’ and ‘‘punishing’’ as they prepare to strike.
Resident doctors in Manawatu¯ are among the 3300 nationwide planning to walk off the job as talks with district health boards about renewing the Residential Doctors’ National Collective Agreement break down.
The New Zealand Resident Doctors’ Association, which accounts for up to 90 per cent of the workforce, has warned of a doctors’ strike in mid-january after nearly a year of negotiations stalled around Christmas.
With the tensions unlikely to be resolved in the next two weeks, Midcentral District Health Board was making plans to minimise the strike’s effect on patients.
Midcentral acting chief executive Scott Ambridge said he respected doctors’ right to strike, but it meant the board’s ability to provide services would be affected.
Information about what measures the board would put in place wasn’t available over the New Year break, but Ambridge said it would be released as soon as possible.
Mike Fleete, a resident doctor at Palmerston North Hospital, said doctors preferred not to strike, but he and many of his colleagues felt terms being demanded by the health boards were ‘‘punishing’’ and unfair.
‘‘Their offer is insulting. The terms would significantly change the way we work and they’re diluting the roster changes we striked for [in 2016 and 2017], making them no longer safe.’’
The latest standoff comes just a year after the association and health boards settled a bitter three-year dispute by introducing ‘‘safer’’ rosters in the agreement.
Those negotiations started in 2015 as resident doctors sought a reduction in their dangerously exhausting hours, including 12-hour shifts, which could run up to 14 days in a row, with unpaid overtime. As negotiations stalled, there was a series of strikes over 2016 and early 2017.
But that agreement expired on February 28, 2018.
Fleete said tired doctors made dangerous mistakes and his colleagues were not willing to back-pedal on rosters.
And terms seeking to exclude the association from future negotiations made the health boards’ offer even more unpalatable, he said.
Fleete said it was an attempt to weaken doctors’ bargaining power, because the union was too successful in the last dispute, and the health boards felt they could pressure smaller unions or individuals into concessions.
Health boards’ negotiation team spokesman Peter Bramley said the boards had made a good offer that built on past negotiations to deal with stress and fatigue, and it was regrettable doctors were choosing to strike.
‘‘We’re not interested in clawing back conditions as suggested, but rather are looking for options that allow greater local flexibility in work patterns that support better training and improved clinical care.’’
Resident Doctors’ Association national secretary Deborah Powell said most workers knew ‘‘flexibility in work patterns’’ was, in practice, often a euphemism for working employees harder. ‘‘[The doctors] feel it’ll mostly mean local managers putting pressure on them to do more hours than they really feel is safe.’’