KEY POINTS:
Tomorrow's strike of more than 2000 junior doctors may not be the last, as talks between their union and the health boards continue to flounder.
The strike, starting at 7am tomorrow and continuing until 7am Friday, mirror the doctors' two-day strike two weeks ago.
Thousands of New Zealanders' elective surgery was postponed then, and the same result will follow from tomorrow's action.
It will have a financial cost - estimated at well above $1 million per day to the country's public health sector - from advertising the strike, planning contingency strategies and paying senior doctors additional hourly rates to cover for the missing junior doctors.
But New Zealand Resident Doctors Association general secretary Dr Deborah Powell told the Herald last night she didn't think tomorrow's strike would have an effect on the health boards' position, calling it one of "non-negotiation".
That would mean the union would go back to doctors after the strike and discuss the next steps, she said.
Further strikes would definitely feature in those discussions.
The doctors want a 13.3 per cent increase each year for three years to their present package. Health boards are offering 4.25 per cent per year for three years.
Despite a series of tit-for-tat media releases between the NZRDA and the district health boards yesterday, no new offers were tabled.
Health board pay data showed first-year junior doctors' total pay averaged about $88,000 a year, lead negotiator David Meates said.
Dr Powell said that figure was wrong. Doctors would need to work long hours, often totalling more than 70 in a week, to receive that.
High levels of responsibility and more generous pay in many other countries are also a feature consistently raised by the doctors. They say their present pay is equivalent to about $22 an hour - too little for such a role, they add.
The parties couldn't agree on which figures were more accurate, but do agree that thousands of operations would be affected by tomorrow's strike. They include joint replacements, hysterectomies, cataract operations, grommets and prostate operations.
Many patients spend years waiting for those operations.
Dr Powell said the doctors were not enjoying seeing the effects the strikes were having on patients.
TIT FOR TAT
* A District Health Boards New Zealand statement yesterday said an offer it made after tomorrow's strikes were announced would have given junior doctors a lump-sum equivalent to 4.25 per cent of their yearly earnings to ensure the strikes did not progress. It also set out a plan for an independent commission.
* Health boards' spokesman David Meates responded to strike spokeswoman Dr Deborah Powell's comparison with senior doctors, saying it was being used to "distort a picture to somehow justify a claim totalling 40 per cent over three years".
* The New Zealand Medical Association chairman, Dr Peter Foley, said there was a desperate need for a change of approach to the stand-off. "The Government must intervene," he said.
