Specialists thumb noses at pay offer

By MARTIN JOHNSTON

The industrial troubles at four of the country's leading hospitals have deteriorated on a new front, with specialists voting against a pay offer.

In a ballot taken by the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, 87 per cent of those who voted rejected the pay proposal from the Auckland District Health Board.

About 350 of the board's more than 600 senior doctors belong to the union and 44 per cent voted.

The board had offered successive pay rises of $3000 and $2500 in a two-year deal. The specialists' pay scale now ranges from $105,000 to $147,000.

The rejection comes in the leadup to a planned second strike, next week, by most of the board's radiographers, unless talks tomorrow can break that pay dispute.

Cardiac and lung technicians, who also went on strike last week and have imposed a fortnight-long overtime ban, are waiting for the board to reconsider their claim for a 7.97 per cent pay rise after mediation talks on Monday.

Ian Powell, of the specialists' association, said the voting response from the doctors was lower than hoped for, but was still a valid outcome.

He said the board's offer of $3000 for the first year was reasonable, but the association wanted a one-year term as two years was too long to wait to address association claims for higher payments for on-call, after-hours work and to increase the annual leave entitlement to 30 days, from the present 27.

Seven of the 21 district health boards already gave specialists 30 days a year, and this was also a common entitlement for senior doctors in British hospitals, Mr Powell said.

Board chief executive Graeme Edmond said he was disappointed by the rejection of the offer, which was "right on" the 2 per cent cost-growth limit set by the Government.

A strike was unlikely at Auckland board hospitals, he said, although a potential "strike situation" was emerging at the South Canterbury health board, where senior doctors were due to hold a two-hour stopwork meeting next Monday.

In August, the association's national executive passed a vote of no confidence in the Auckland board leadership following board chairman Wayne Brown's verbal attacks on doctors, for which he later apologised.

Further reading
Feature: Our sick hospitals