KEY POINTS:
Junior doctors are today issuing a notice of nationwide strike action later this month, after their pay talks with district health boards broke down last month.
The 2500-member Resident Doctors' Association said it would hold a 48-hour strike starting at 7am on April 22.
General secretary Deborah Powell said it would be a complete withdrawal of labour by members, who were frustrated at health boards' rejecting union claims designed to help retain more junior doctors in public-hospital employment.
But the union will cooperate, under industrial legislation, with hospital planning that is likely to require some members to help out to provide life-preserving services.
The union says it is claiming three pay rises of 10 per cent each in a three-year deal and that the employers have offered two rises of 4 per cent each in a two-year deal.
But the health boards say the union's claims amount to a 40 per cent increase when other conditions are considered.
The industrial action will be the union's second national strike within two years. The last was a five-day strike in June 2006 which severely affected public hospitals, leading to the postponement of thousands of outpatient appointments and non-urgent operations.
"This is about retaining junior doctors in permanent DHB employment," Dr Powell said. "They are leaving to Australia and to locum back to DHBs or private accident and medical centres."
The main aims of the pay claim were to narrow the gap with locum (casual) and Australian pay rates.
The number of house officers _ junior doctors in their first postgraduate years _ was in a crisis, with a net loss of 217 in the first three months of this year, she said. At some provincial health boards, like Southland and Whanganui, at least half of house officers were locums.
She said that with hourly rates of up to $150 being offered to junior doctors, the health boards were paying out large sums of money that would be better spent on a good pay rise to help retain junior doctors as permanent employees.
But three rises of 10 per cent would be just a start in rectifying the existing pay gaps, Dr Powell said.
Health boards' spokesman David Meates, the chief executive of the Wairarapa health board, said he would not comment on the strike notice until he had seen it. "We are waiting to see what comes through."
