“We value our doctors and want to do the best we can for them, but the reality is that Health NZ has limited budget available for salary settlements within its tight financial constraints,” she said.
Health NZ was urgently applying for facilitation, which would “give an independent party the opportunity to hear from both sides and make a recommendation”.
“We believe we have been fair and realistic, including offering to remove the lowest pay steps for senior doctors.”
Cronin said Te Whatu Ora had “heard” the union’s concern regarding growing and retaining the senior doctor workforce.
Under Te Whatu Ora’s new offer, a first-year specialist would receive a $17,700 (9.5%) increase on base salary and a 9.5% increase on other remuneration, including KiwiSaver, and another 6% the following year.
A second-year specialist would receive a $11,800 (6.2%) pay increase on base salary plus 6.2% for KiwiSaver, and another 6% increase in the following year.
All other specialists would have their salaries increased by 3% over two years, with a lump sum payment of $8000 to doctors with three or more years’ experience.
“Additionally, we offered an incentive in ‘hard to recruit’ districts, which will assist in attracting and retaining senior doctors.”
Latest offer ‘worse’ - union
The Association of Salaried Medical Specialists executive director Sarah Dalton said however there was no point taking the offer to its members as for most of them it was “worse than what was originally on the table”.
Most specialists were already near or at the top of the specialist scale, and for them the offer (a 33-month term with no backdating) worked out at “less than 0.77% on average”, she said.
Dalton said the offer of less than 1% amounted to a pay cut in real terms, and would “drive existing doctors away rather than help retain them”.
It would not attract any new senior doctors to fill vacancies, which run at 12% on average, and up to 44% in some districts.
“New Zealand will be short more than 3450 senior doctors by 2032 and we are already seeing the impact of doctor shortages across the country with longer wait times in emergency departments and for first specialists’ appointments.
“At the same time, Health NZ continues to pay considerable amounts to locums [doctors covering specialist vacancies] some of whom are left in the posts for months rather than days or weeks, and who are paid significantly more than salaried staff.
“So we think their priorities are wrong, they’re not taking a long-term investment approach. They still can’t adequately account for where there are gaps and where there are not.”
While Health NZ was claiming to have made “recruitment and retention offers” in hard to staff areas, that was only happening in four districts, she said.
“They have coincidentally limited those to the four that have been in the media the most. Some of them do have the greatest need, like Tairāwhiti, but there are regions that have demonstrably higher vacancy levels that have not been included in this list.
“So they continue to ignore their own data in terms of what they say they are doing.”
Dalton acknowledged that Te Whatu Ora did move to address some problems in mediation, including offering to “restore relativities” with junior doctors.
That would benefit about 500 members.
However, some doctors were still waiting for aspects of the last collective settlement to be implemented. For instance, some districts were still not paying emergency department shift allowances.
“The strike will result in planned procedures being postponed, but the same number of procedures are lost every week due to ongoing staff shortages,” Dalton said.
Hospitals and emergency departments will remain open, and the union is working with Health NZ to ensure life-preserving services continue during the strike.
– RNZ
