By MATHEW DEARNALEY
Industrial unrest in public hospitals looks increasingly likely this year as negotiations for a national agreement for senior doctors threaten to overlap a pay equity push by nurses.
The Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, representing about 2150 hospital doctors, is gloomy about chances of an early settlement, although mediated talks with 20 of the 21 district health boards resume tomorrow.
Northland doctors are the only ones who decided not to join a national document.
Association executive director Ian Powell says a rejection by 84 per cent of balloted doctors of the boards' latest pay offer shows the parties still wide apart after more than nine months.
He says 2004 will prove very difficult if the negotiations run into not just nurses' gender pay parity negotiations in mid-year, but also junior doctors' bid to renew a national collective.
"There is a risk of anarchy in employment relations if DHBs continue to misunderstand the needs of their health professionals."
But the employers' spokesman, Counties-Manukau District Health Board chief executive Stephen McKernan, said last night that nobody ever expected merging 20 agreements into a single national deal to be easy.
Talk of industrial anarchy was disappointing, given that agreement had been reached on many points and the employers remained supportive of the doctors' desire for a national document.
Mr McKernan said the doctors' opening pay claims would have added about 30 per cent to the payroll - a suggestion disputed by Mr Powell - and that a modification of some of these would not cut much off that figure.
Mr Powell said the overall cost rise to the employers would be "much closer to 13 per cent than to 30 per cent".
Year of anarchy predicted for hospitals
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