KEY POINTS:
Nine unionised laboratory workers at Middlemore Hospital have been suspended today for refusing to do some of their duties.
The suspensions follow the same move against seven members of the Medical Laboratory Workers Union at the West Coast District Health Board yesterday.
Today's suspensions are the latest development of a long-running industrial dispute between the union and health boards.
"The union is taking legal advice on the suspension notices and the way they [the employers] are doing it," union national secretary Bryan Raill, a Middlemore employee, said.
The suspensions at the Middlemore lab, where 98 per cent of the more than 100 staff are union members, range from two hours to four days, depending on which jobs the workers are refusing to do.
Mr Raill said two had been suspended for four days, one of them for refusing to answer the telephone and the other for refusing to screen patient samples for multi-drug-resistant bacteria.
Three had been suspended for up to two hours, the period for which they were refusing to do full-blood counts.
Colleagues of the suspended workers would support them financially, he said.
Hospital chief operating officer Ron Dunham said the laboratory was providing a nearly complete service most of the time and patients would not notice the action, which was not a safety issue.
"That work can be delayed in most cases. We have an agreement about life-preserving services. That's working fine," he said.
"We haven't cancelled any elective surgery, which is the sort of thing we would normally do [during a strike].
"We shouldn't have any more suspensions today. There are more strike notices for tomorrow. We will just take it one day at a time."
The Middlemore action is scheduled to end next Monday, but notices have been served to spread the disruption to other laboratories, including Auckland City Hospital's.
The action follows a series of strikes since December by 1200 union members in pursuit of improved pay and conditions at 15 district health boards and the Blood Service. They also want a collective agreement extended to laboratories that take over health board work.
The health boards say they have offered an 8.5 per cent salary increase over three years and that private laboratories do not wish to be a party to a collective agreement oriented towards health board work.
