Heart and lung technologists down their tools

By MARTIN JOHNSTON health reporter

Green Lane Hospital in Auckland faces another series of strikes, starting today, as 36 heart and lung technologists renew their pay rise demands.

The Auckland District Health Board says a handful of patients' appointments have been cancelled because of four-hour strikes this afternoon, on Thursday and Friday.

The technologists, members of the Association of Professional and Executive Employees, plan to picket outside the hospital during the strikes, which follow a three-day walk-out last month and come on top of an overtime ban.

The latest action comes between disruptive strikes by 90 health board radiographers, who belong to the same union.

Dr Kevin Ellyett, a delegate and charge respiratory technologist, said Green Lane was unable to hire trained staff in his specialty area because of poor wages.

"We have to hire trainees and hope they stay once they're trained," he said.

Respiratory technologists test patients' lung flow, functioning and capacity, helping doctors to decide on treatments, including lung transplants.

The cardiac technologists' work includes setting up and monitoring electronic heart pacemakers once they have been implanted.

Trainees in both groups, who usually have a university degree, start on a basic salary of $28,000. This rises in annual steps to $33,000, and may continue to about $60,000 at management's discretion.

The technologists believe they are underpaid compared with sonographers - technologists who use ultra-sound scanners and whose trainee starting rate is $48,000.

Dr Ellyett said that was what he was paid and he has a PhD in physiology.

Colleagues say Liane Allchorne, 41, is the country's most highly qualified cardiac technologist, yet she is leaving for a higher-paying job with a medical equipment supplier.

"It's tough here at the moment; it's really stressful," she said.

Technologists were not remunerated for their skills, which had increased markedly in the past decade in line with the rising sophistication of equipment such as pacemakers, and some of their work was performed independently of doctors.

Her job included electrophysiology - in which radio-frequency energy is used to destroy tiny amounts of heart tissue via catheter tubes inserted at the groin - for the treatment of abnormal heart rhythm.

The technologists want a 9.2 per cent pay rise in a 27-month deal.

They say the board's offer of 2 per cent plus the same again next year fails to cover inflation, let alone the job's expansion.

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