KEY POINTS:
Hundreds of senior hospital doctors will hold stopwork meetings in support of claims for an extra $10,000 a year.
Ian Powell, executive director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, said it would be the first time such meetings had been held right throughout the country.
He said
the association was fed up with a lack of response from district health boards to its claims for a $10,000-a-year pay increase, or an average 7 per cent. The doctors also wanted compensation for being on call.
The average salary of fulltime senior doctors at New Zealand public hospitals is around $140,000.
Mr Powell said their counterparts in New South Wales receive more than A$29,000 ($32,500) a year more. After seven years as specialists, the gap increases to more than A$50,000.
He said the boards' position had remained unchanged since negotiations started 11 months ago, sticking to an approximate 1.4 per cent increase over a three-year period.
Up to 2700 senior doctors employed at the country's 21 boards would attend the stopwork meetings, except for those involved in emergency care.
There would be one meeting at each site, and it could take about three weeks to hold them all. "It is quite a logistical task to organise."
Deadlocked negotiations have seen health workers, including radiographers, medical laboratory workers and radiation therapists, walk off the job in the past year. Of those, only two groups, junior doctors and radiation therapists, have settled their claims.
Mr Powell said the decision to hold national stopwork meetings was made by the association's national executive. He stressed the stopwork meetings were not strikes but an entitlement for paid two-hour meetings.
He said the association had tried to address serious senior doctor recruitment and retention risks but had faced intransigence and indifference.
"After 14 days of negotiation last year and six in mediation so far this year, the impasse remains."
Mr Powell said the district health boards had said they would make a new offer and had scheduled further mediation.
"But the DHBs' track record to date suggests the impasse will continue.
"Senior doctors have simply been pushed too far and treated with disdain for too long by the DHBs' negotiating team."
Mr Powell said New Zealand was under serious threat from Australia, which had significantly increased salaries for senior doctors because of its own shortages.
Dr Nigel Murray, lead negotiator for the boards, said they were in negotiations and mediation with the senior doctors and there had been an agreement not to discuss such matters with the media. The boards would honour that agreement.
He added that senior doctors were entitled under law to hold stopwork meetings to discuss pay claims and the boards had no problem with that.
