KEY POINTS:
Hospital patients can expect a messy three weeks of industrial action.
Radiographers at seven district health boards - Southland, Otago, Canterbury, Hutt Valley, Lakes (Rotorua), Tairawhiti (Gisborne) and Bay of Plenty - yesterday started the first of a series of work bans expected to stretch into early May.
Overnight bans on radiographic work, including x-rays, CT and MRI scans and ultrasound, took place last night in Southland, Rotorua, Taupo, Tauranga, Whakatane and Opotiki hospitals, while Hutt Valley radiographers walk out today for four days.
Yesterday, the Association of Professionals and Executive Employees, which represents about 80 per cent of radiographers at the seven DHBs, issued notice of one-hour strikes in the middle of the day in Canterbury early next month, in addition to overnight work bans and weekend strikes.
Next week, medical laboratory scientists with all health boards and the Blood Service walk off the job for two days.
Other groups that have gone on strike in the past year include junior doctors and radiation therapists.
Ongoing strikes have caused frustration in medical quarters, with the Orthopaedic Association calling for a return to compulsory arbitration.
"All I'm suggesting is that there has to be a way of maintaining hospital services while people have their wage negotiations,". said president Murray Fosbender. "When it comes to an impasse ... rather than going out on strike, there must be some other way of settling the differences."
While some saw compulsory arbitration as a "dinosaur method", he said, "when you think about it, strikes are as old as they come too."
Arbitration should apply to all essential services at public hospitals, said Dr Fosbender. "It's the biggest single taxpayer cost, health. And to have it lurching to a halt every few months because of a series of strikes is damaging. It's costly."
While patients were assured of treatment in life-threatening cases, areas such as limb-saving procedures during a strike were on the margins of life-preserving agreements.
"It just puts another hurdle of decision-making in the middle of the night when you're facing this sort of problem. Do you wait till the morning? Do you get them in now?
"It is an added layer of risk, which to me is unacceptable because it is avoidable."
The Minister of Health, Pete Hodgson, has previously refused to be drawn into industrial negotiations.
But National health spokesman Tony Ryall said that it was more than just an employ-ment issue that the minister couldduck.
"A responsible Minister of Health wouldn't be sitting in his Wellington office watching one strike follow another."
THE DISPUTE
The Association of Professionals and Executive Employees says the strike action, taking place after nine months of negotiation, is about pay parity.
About 25 per cent of radiographers receive less remuneration than the remaining 75 per cent only because they work for different DHBs.
The DHBs say pay differences around the country are too big to bridge in one go.
