Doctors and DHBs bargain

A second junior doctors’ strike could be on the cards, the New Zealand Resident Doctors’ Association (NZRDA) says.

A lacklustre bargaining meeting was held in Auckland yesterday morning between the union and representatives from 10 district health boards, said Dr Deborah Powell, NZRDA national secretary.

‘‘We put an alternative proposition to the employers, but they declined to discuss it any further and after 15 minutes they left the table.

‘‘We are balloting our registered medical officers (RMOs) for further strike action,’’ Powell said.

The NZRDA was prepared to go ahead with a second strike on November 23 and 24, if union members wanted that, she said.

A spokesman for DHB Shared Services said there were ‘‘positive aspects’’ from yesterday’s negotiations, and the organisation would take the union’s proposals to DHB chief executives for consideration.

NZRDA wants the current rosters reduced from a maximum of 12 consecutive days to 10. It also wants doctors’ penal components from their salary retained.

As it stands, doctors are paid a penal rate on top of their base salary in recognition of their having to work nights and weekends.

It is a standard rate on the total salary, and is not applied for individual weekends or nights worked.

‘‘Under the safer-hours proposal from NZRDA, resident doctors will continue to work all the nights and weekends they always have, simply in shorter blocks of consecutive days,’’ said Powell.

She said the union was happy to leave the penal rates as is, but if the DHBs wanted to take them out of the salary, doctors would need to be paid for individual weekends worked.

‘‘NZRDA has proposed taking the penal component out of our salary as it is currently paid and specifically reapply that to the weekends,’’ Powell said.

‘‘This dispute was not about money, it was about health and safety . . . Taking our penal rates off us, as the DHBs have proposed, would result in an average RMO taking a pay cut of at least $20,000 per annum.’’

The DHB Shared Services spokesman said NZRDA’s suggestions of massive pay cuts were ‘‘nonsense’’. He said the penal rates were introduced to salaries in the early 1990s when the public health system mostly operated Monday to Friday and it was unusual to work outside business hours.

‘‘The world’s turned a number of times since then, and the way we work has changed as well.’’

The spokesman said not all penal rates would be taken away under the DHBs’ current proposal. For example, a doctor working a 10-hour shift on a weeknight would be paid for 18 hours.

But doctors would no longer receive pay for weekdays rostered off, and would not get extra money for working weekends.

‘‘If they have a day off, rostered, completely free of duty, we don’t want to pay for it.’’

The spokesman said under the proposed system, doctors would have to work more than 48 hours in a week to drop below a time-anda-half rate for night and weekend work.

‘‘They get 24 hours of penal rates in any given week they’re not working nine to five, Monday to Friday.’’

DHB Shared Services will put an offer to the unions next Wednesday.