Cancer therapists to strike for rise

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

Short-staffed hospital radiation therapists who administer cancer treatment in Auckland, Hamilton and Palmerston North intend to strike for a pay rise of at least 20 per cent.

Their union said yesterday that members had voted unanimously in favour of striking, and a formal ballot of the 92 therapists was now being held on the timing and extent of such action.

National union secretary Dr Deborah Powell said the ballot results would be known by the end of the week.

The spectre of industrial action comes as desperate patients, facing average waiting times of 16 to 18 weeks in Auckland, consider taking up a Government offer to pay for them to go to Australia for treatment.

Dr Powell said it was a tough call for her members to take action which would add to those delays. However, faced with a staffing crisis, the choice was between "doing nothing and the situation gets worse or doing something and fixing it".

North Island cancer centres were 40 short of their establishment figure of 150 therapists, and the 11 who started work last year after graduating from Otago University had left the country or were planning to go.

Dr Powell said Australia's radiation treatment service was also under huge pressure, with a waiting list of about 10,000 patients, even though it paid newly qualified therapists $18,000 a year more than the $32,000 starting salary in this country.

The Government scheme is aimed at private Australian clinics, and Auckland Hospital radiation oncology clinical head Dr John Childs said last night that six patients had already left for treatment.

Auckland Healthcare chief operating officer Neil Woodhams, spokesman for the three health boards facing strike action, acknowledged that New Zealand salaries lagged behind other countries but said living costs were lower here.

He defended a pay rise offer of 3 per cent now and the same again next year as "fair and reasonable considering the financial environment that the district health boards are working under".

His own board was losing $60 million a year, and could not afford to set precedents for other workers involved in pay talks.

The union says its members are seeking pay rises of 20 per cent to 25 per cent, which would include a starting rate of $40,000 - but Mr Woodhams believes other items would push the total cost up 30 per cent.

Dr Powell said the claim for her Auckland members would cost their employer less than $400,000 a year, against the $500,000 she estimated had been saved in the past six months from 20 unfilled vacancies.