Southern workers enticed north to staff new Auckland labs

Workers at sister laboratories of Auckland's new Labtests company have been asked to help out in its countdown to taking over the region's community pathology service.

Labtests will progressively take over the taxpayer-funded community testing contract from Diagnostic Medlab from August 10 to September 7.

A union representing laboratory scientists and technicians has objected to what it calls the "insufficient" terms of the offer to staff of Southern Community Laboratories (SCL). It runs laboratories in Christchurch, Dunedin and elsewhere.

Labtests and SCL are owned by Australian-based Healthscope.

A Medical Laboratory Workers Union newsletter says the Southern Community offer involves staff taking paid leave and being paid their normal rate at Labtests - "a creative version of 'double time"'.

Union executive officer Deborah Powell said yesterday: "Leave should be for leave. That's the point, not to work during leave.

"The employer is selling it as double pay. It isn't.

"It's not an incentive in any real sense for the staff."

Other collective agreements she had negotiated for health workers provided for staff who worked away from their usual workplace to be paid time-and-a-quarter and expenses such as return trips home during the assignment. The union wanted a similar deal.

Labtests chief executive Ulf Lindskog said: "It's only a handful of SCL staff. They will provide training and transition support.

"People are free to accept whether they want to [come to Auckland] or not. We've offered them standard rates. All expenses are covered - travel, accommodation, meal allowance."

Only in one case - in which the employee had "an enormous amount of annual leave accrued" - was someone taking paid leave to work in Auckland.

This was in addition to the normal rate of pay and expenses. The employee had suggested using leave.

Recruiting was going "exceptionally well", he said. "We have all the staff we need to operate."

The Northern Chemical Workers Union, which represents around 150 laboratory workers at Diagnostic Medlab (DML), has negotiated adraft collective agreement with Labtests.

The union's secretary, Pat Brown, said rates and conditions were similar to the agreement with DML.

Labtests had agreed to two pay rises of 3 per cent in a two-year document.

He said that only around 30 of the union's DML members were planning to go to Labtests.