Nearly 5000 senior doctors, dentists to strike after Association of Salaried Medical Specialists vote

About 5000 senior doctors and dentists will strike as union members vote to “send a strong message to [Te Whatu Ora] it needs to improve its current substandard offer”.

The Association of Salaried Medical Specialists’ (ASMS) chief executive, Sarah Dalton, told the Herald it was the first time the union had gone on a national strike.

Dalton said members wanted pay rates to increase with the Consumer Price Index, and she was hopeful the strike action would encourage Te Whatu Ora to “think again”.

Senior medical officers, New Zealand’s most experienced and well-trained doctors, have an average total salary of $318,000 including additional payments for shift-work and superannuation.

“[The vote] is a significant endorsement of collective action and reflects the extreme frustration of members over Te Whatu Ora and the Government’s refusal to value our workforce, address staff shortages and ensure that salaries maintain their real value against inflation,” Dalton said.

Association of Salaried Medical Specialists chief executive Sarah Dalton.

ASMS issued strike notices to the employer, with the first strike happening on September 5, followed by two more.

“The three endorsed strike dates send a strong message to the employer that it needs to improve its current substandard offer,” she said.

Te Whatu Ora chief people officer Andrew Slater said they had received strike notices for September 5, 13 and 21.

Slater said Te Whatu Ora had made a fair offer, “and we’re disappointed it has not been accepted”, but respected union members’ right to strike.

“We will continue to work with ASMS towards agreeing a settlement and to see if the strike can be averted,” Slater said.

“In the meantime, contingency planning is under way to ensure safe and appropriate care for patients in the event action does go ahead.”

He said Te Whatu Ora’s offer would see all senior doctors get a $15,000 to $26,000 pay increase and a lump sum of about $4000.

This offer would top up a settlement the ASMS accepted last year, which included a $6000 increase in all pay scales and a $6000 lump sum.

Some union members would continue working throughout the strikes to continue life-preserving services, she said.

“We expect to be in discussions with Te Whatu Ora from tomorrow over such [life-preserving services] agreements,” she said.

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said the best way to resolve the dispute with senior doctors was to get back around the bargaining table.

Hipkins said he didn’t want to see any medical staff on strike, and Te Whatu Ora would have contingency plans in place.

ASMS’ rejected claim follows “two years of real pay cuts under the Government’s ‘public sector pay guidance’, accounting for a real-terms pay cut of 11 per cent”, the union said.

“Te Whatu Ora will not even pay senior doctors and dentists the bare minimum to ensure their staff do not take a real-terms pay cut for the third year in a row,” Dalton said.

“Every employee in New Zealand deserves to have the value of their income maintained, especially when they are performing critical frontline tasks and being asked to cover as many staffing shortages as our doctors currently are,” she said.’

‘We’re no longer prepared to take it’ - Dalton

Dalton said 82 per cent of members voted in favour of the strike.

“While we’re losing people to Australia and to the private health system, they’re [Te Whatu Ora] unable to even maintain current pay and conditions for our members,” Dalton said.

“We’ve reached a point where we’re no longer prepared to take that.

“It’s been three years - it needs to stop, and they [Te Whatu Ora] need to stop that slide [in pay].”

Dalton said New Zealand relied “heavily” on overseas-trained doctors and dentists to fill vacancies: “However, overseas doctors have larger stopped applying for jobs due to pay and working condition issues.”

Dalton said the union was “incredibly” hopeful the strike action would encourage Te Whatu Ora to “think again” about how it was responding to a “health workforce crisis”.

“You know, [Te Whatu Ora] had said we’re short 1700 doctors across New Zealand. We think that’s an undercount,” she said.

“Already, hospitals are critically short-staffed, with senior doctors increasingly trying to run services with insufficient senior and junior doctors, nurses and allied health staff.

“Cementing in a third or fourth year of real pay cuts [not inflation adjusted] is not the way to go about retaining and recruiting sorely needed specialist doctors and dentists.”

She said union members’ decision to strike represented a wider frustration from workers about how hard it was to adequately care for patients.

“We’ve had a lot of correspondence from members saying they’re really disheartened, for example, by having to say to one patient, ‘You need an operation but you can’t have it’.

“Patients have to wait too long to be seen by specialists, and they have to wait far longer than they should because our system is not resourced to cope,” she said.

“The workforce gaps and resourcing shortfalls are so significant and ingrained.”

Dalton said the strike was “historic”, saying it was the first national strike the ASMS had voted for.

Union president Julian Vyas said the health system had “[taken] the collective goodwill of doctors for granted”.