KEY POINTS:
Two meetings of senior doctors have overwhelmingly supported holding a vote on an unprecedented national strike to break their year-long pay dispute with district health boards.
Do you support doctors taking industrial action? Here is the latest selection of Your Views:
Doctor (Christchurch)
Perspective is everything. I have to correct Christos regarding the top pay for junior doctors. There are very few positions where doctors work 40 hours a week. In fact, the pay scale does not recognise that doctors may work less than 40 (the lowest range being 40-44.9). A doctor earning '120k' is 10 years post graduation, often doing the work of a junior consultant and working the equivalent of 1 and 1 half full time jobs (60 hours a week). This is only rostered hours and in any one week 70 per cent of doctors exceed their rostered hours by 2-10 hours. Now and then, I have worked out my hourly rate which was as low as $12 when I started and now 7 years later is about $25.
In addition, most of these junior doctors are studying for post graduate exams for up to 50 hours a week. You try and fit family, relationships, housework and a healthy lifestyle around that. Stephen Childs stated that doctors (generation x and y) are 'selfish' for wanting to work less than 65 hours a week. Well, when the average debt on graduation is $74000, your relationship breaks down and your kids don't know who you are, you may wish you had been a bit more selfish. Junior doctors, support our senior colleagues.
Health Care Professional(ex-Auckland/ex-NZ)
I support 'Midife (Auckland)'s comment, and further add: DHBNZ and the NZGovt need to seriously consider retention of experienced senior doctors! Salary increase is a step in the right direction towards one solution to their (Drs) already demanding work situations. Health care professionals are not "in it for the money"! If we were, then HCP's would've become extinct long ago. Think about it people! Really!
Leo
Pay them what they deserve. People need to get real, they work to hard and train too long not to get compensated appropriately. Some people in the private sector forget how horrible it is to work amongst, death, misery and sickness. One day it could be you or a loved one that needs their assistance. So let's get some perspective here.
Luke Mason
The years and years of study. The long hours, and giving up any normalcy of life is a big cost for a doctor. There is ongoing training and they're always under constant pressure to perform above expectations - the life of a doctor can often be stressful and lonely. How dare people such as 'Hyperborean' belittle their profession and their right to strike. They earn every cent they work for. I thought this right wing National Party mentality died 10 years ago?
Andrew Atkin
I don't support industrial action full stop. The government should employ a system of flexible, job-specific minimum wages, and empower employers to demand no union presence as a prior condition to employment. Sound ghastly? The fact is that if we did this, then many more people would get a fairer deal (you would substantially drive-up bottom-level wages - with big social payoffs), and would allow the free-market to function better within the job market, which is good for real growth. At the end of the day, unionism is just a system to force employers to pay staff more, and regardless of the inherent or market-value of the workers. There are better and more effective ways of creating fairness, and unions are certainly not always fair. Don't buy the "moral highground" that the unions always try to take - it's bollocks. Unions take more than their fair-share when they can get away with, just like employers do when they can get away with it too.
Kirsten
I definitely support the action. Our doctors are over worked and understaffed. And with the shortage in NZ they the DHB would rather pay high end locum prices than actually give the doctors a pay rise. Maybe this money could be used to keep doctors in NZ.
Hyperborean
Bearing in mind it was trade unions that destroyed the British Empire and left England a third-rate banana republic, totally reliant on foreign imports use the same analogy on the health of human beings (and the 'welfare state') in NZ.
Christos
Dear "Not from here", you are mistaken.
Having worked as a junior doctor both here and in Europe, I assure you that junior doctors here get paid far more here, and for far less work than in Europe - how does $120K for a 40 hour week at the top of the junior doctor scale, for far less responsibility than in Europe sound to you? Why do you think the DHBs are currently spending $1.7m on a recruitment drive getting more UK junior doctors over here, they are easier to persuade than trying to keep our own NZ-trained junior doctors from going elsewhere to become specialists. The senior doctors have much less junior doctor support here and earn around half as much as say a similar specialist job in the UK. 'Control' of these jobs by our medical council is what the public seem to want - see all the uproar about our foreign doctor rates being the highest in the developed world, about foreign doctors being under qualified, making more mistakes, hard to understand, culturally 'unsafe' etc. Opening the barriers to Bangladeshi, Hungarian, Nigerian doctors isn't what the public seem to want - true, they would probably work for $1/hr though! Then there would be no strike!
Hawkeye, Trapper, BJ
This sounds like Major Frank Burns would do. Sorry Ferret Face.
Paul (Tauranga)
I find again the DHB management and its staff are at logger heads regarding their pay. How does this happen time and time again? Every year the workers prepare for battle with the DHB, now called DHBNZ. I believe that the employee employer relationships in the public sector has declined over the years the employees want more money for the work they do and the employer will only give the bare minimum it has to to keep within their budget set by central GOVT. What is the solution?
1. International research regarding pay is one answer that could be looked at and made public.
2. Disclosure of the cost of hiring locum Doctors, as this is draining the money pot for potential settlements.
3. The conditions of the working environments for the employees as this leads to resentment towards the DHB making it even harder for relationship to be maintained.
4. The two parties working together to take their case to central Govt and agreeing that the DHB do not have the cash to support the Doctors or any other employees pay claims.
Doing your dirty washing in public can only lead to a public fight and who will have the courage to back down now, neither will I think.
Midwife (Auckland)
Senior doctors work incredibly hard in understaffed and stressful conditions. The current shortage of junior doctors increases this work load exponentially. While this exists in almost all departments. I definitely notice it in maternity, with our senior doctors being squeezed harder and harder. As health care professionals, doctors, midwives and nurses are disinclined to strike, because we know the impact it has on the day to day life of our clients. However, the senior doctors are now forced to consider this option. With luck it will be settled before it reaches that conclusion, but it is not fair that we as HCPs should be shot down for trying to achieve a fair working deal. Whilst it is recognised that we will never be paid what our counterparts in the financial world do, because we have chosen an undervalued role in society, it is not fair that we should then also be judged for trying to achieve a fair wage by striking. Even when we do strike, we remain available in more situations than not. Who else does that? Senior doctors, you have my respect, and my support in this issue.
Nomis
No, I will not support the senior doctors. They tend to forget what were the reasons that they want to be a doctor. It's not just money as their primary concern.
Auckland
Everyone should take strike action. All you ever hear is how the economy is rising, the council rates are rising, interest rates are rising. Everything is rising except for how much we get paid.
Cut the Doctors some slack and increase their pay. And people wonder why there's a brain drain. Who would stay in NZ when you get paid half the money here, than you would in another country?
Not from here
We have first hand knowledge that senior doctors in NZ are actually paid twice the going rate for best paid salaried doctors in continental EU hospitals, with approx. half the work time requirements. Perhaps senior doctors in Oz or US are paid even more, but should that be our yardstick? If we had a more accessible labour market for those vaunted senior jobs, we might see rates coming down. Currently, though, access to these jobs is controlled by the doctors themselves via the Medical Council, and they keep a nice closed shop going. It's the junior doctors who are suffering from excessive hours for little pay, but once you made it to specialist status in this country, taxpayers will be paying you lavishly!
Sam
The doctors should take industrial action ASAP, the situation sounds ridiculous, and is the result of a poorly managed health system that is fast turning into third world status. Labour have to get real and sort this out, it's embarrassing and shocking to realise how bad it's getting.
