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.
The 2800-strong senior doctors' union, the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, is holding stop-work meetings at public hospitals throughout the country. The first two private meetings were held yesterday in Auckland, attended by around 100 members at North Shore Hospital and 50 at Waitakere Hospital.
Union officials said the North Shore meeting voted unanimously and Waitakere almost unanimously in favour of holding a postal ballot on industrial action. Both meetings also rejected the boards' offer.
President Dr Jeff Brown said that more than half of the senior doctors working at Waitakere yesterday attended. "That's an overwhelming message of rejection" and vote to "move down the path of industrial action unless there's movement".
The union maintains New Zealand's medical workforce is in a crisis, partly because Australian pay rates are much higher.
"We're haemorrhaging senior doctors," said Dr Brown. "There's been over 80 who left in the last year. That's equivalent to Hawkes Bay or Northland's senior doctors. The only sticking plasters are very expensive: locums that cost a huge amount and they don't contribute to the overall running of hospital departments."
Dr Brown said any strike would not put people at risk. Emergency and acute cover would be maintained and only elective surgery and outpatient clinics would be affected, although patients would be inconvenienced.
He said the gap between the union's claims for pay and conditions and the employers' offer was not large.
The health boards tried to find a new way to settle the dispute yesterday by invoking a clause in the expired collective agreement to consider adjudication.
Spokesman Nigel Murray proposed final-offer arbitration by a panel of three independent arbitrators, appointed by the boards and the union. Under this winner-takes-all process, the panel must choose the proposal of one side or the other; it is intended to force the parties to be reasonable.
"Industrial action is anathema to senior doctors," said Dr Murray, "and we need to find a way of settling these pay talks so the patients don't suffer unnecessarily and don't become hostage to industrial action.
"We've exhausted negotiation and mediation and neither wants to see the same confrontational approach and industrial tension that has disrupted hospital services so much over the last year - this is a reasonable and pragmatic solution."
But the union was wary of the proposal - saying final-offer arbitration tended to favour the status quo - but promised to consider it seriously.
"It seems to be a panic reaction in response to the very successful meeting at North Shore," said union executive director Ian Powell.
