The healers' representatives

As medical trade unions harden their industrial action, JAN CORBETT looks at who runs the union show.

Radiation therapists walked away from treating cancer patients last night and, for the second time this year, went on strike. Surely a tough decision.

Throughout the dispute, one person is regularly quoted on behalf of "her" members as though she, too, feels the pain of being paid a pittance for a vital role in saving people's lives. She is articulate, passionate and stroppy. She is Dr Deborah Powell.

When junior doctors go on strike, in equally morally challenging circumstances, one person will dominate that media coverage, speaking on behalf of her members with admirable empathy. And that person will be Dr Deborah Powell.

Should laboratory workers, X-ray staff or dental therapists take industrial action, then Powell will also be their woman, their union secretary.

It has not been unusual, since unions were weakened by the abolition of compulsory membership, for the same officials to represent disparate groups of workers who have banded together under one umbrella.

What is unusual is for those officials not to be employed directly by the union, but to contract those services to the union through their own consultancy company. It is also unusual to be making a good living from representing workers who claim that they aren't. It isn't what we are used to.

Powell appears to be the sort of woman you can be brutally direct with about these things - probably because she gives the impression she will have no hesitation being brutally direct with you, a useful attribute for an industrial advocate who has been battling the hospitals on behalf of health care staff for more than a decade.

So to be, well, um, direct, the Weekend Herald would like to talk to her about "the impression that you and [husband and business partner] Terry have done extremely well financially out of your relationship with the medical unions".

She blushes. But that is the only betrayal of any feeling that she might be insulted or irritated by the suggestion.

"This isn't silk," she smiles, fingering the collar of her emerald-green shirt.

No, but the people who mutter disapprovingly about Deborah and Terry Powells' asset-backing do point to their avocado farm near Whangarei, valued in 1998 at $1.2 million.

"We have an avocado orchard. So what?" she replies. "It's where we live."

Two weeks ago, TVNZ's Sunday night current affairs show 60 Minutes ran a story reporting that the Powells stood to be paid $1 million for their work in a 14-year dispute over free lunches for junior hospital doctors.

Deborah Powell has not seen the story, but does not hesitate in describing it as "misleading". She says it gave the impression they earned $1 million for reaching a settlement with the Auckland District Health Boards, when in fact the $1 million is what they agreed would be the fee for all the work, across all the country.

It covers not only their work from when the dispute began, but for the next six years, the time they say it will take to distribute the money to all the eligible junior doctors - a mobile lot who are apparently difficult to find.

To the suggestion $1 million is still a lot of money, she says, "It's $50,000 a year." And she has employed staff to handle the extra work.

She says they had an actuary quote on how much it would cost to distribute the money and were told it would take 15 per cent of the settlement. The Powells' fee amounts to 5 per cent. The lawyers, she adds, took 30 per cent of the early cases. Their fee, she goes on, comes out of the settlement money, whereas the DHBs have used public money to pay their legal fees.

Clearly, Powell would be a formidable opponent on the debating team.

"If we'd lost, we wouldn't have been paid at all," she says.

Therein lies the difficulty. Right now they have not been paid for the Auckland cases, because employment court Judge Barrie Travis took exception to the way their fee was arranged, but not, as Powell points out, to the size of it.

"Champerty", pronounced "shamperty", is one of those arcane legal terms only lawyers understand and are frowned on if they engage in.

In this context champerty means a third party agrees to cover the costs of the litigation for another party in return for a percentage of the eventual settlement.

Standing to gain a percentage of the fruits of someone else's litigation, rather than being reimbursed for your actual costs, offends against legal principles.

Judge Travis said that the relationship between the Resident Doctors' Association (RDA) and the Powells' company, Contract Negotiating Service (CNS), was champertous. He called their agreement "unlawful and unenforceable" and therefore refused to sign-off on the settlement. The RDA intends appealing that decision.

Deborah Powell, who until she married Terry Powell this year, went by her more distinguishable maiden name Sidebotham, has represented junior doctors in their union disputes since the late 1980s. She trained as a doctor herself, and says she maintains her professional interest. When she talks about RDA disputes she uses "us" and "our" as in "our meals".

That's one of the reasons the RDA has such loyalty to her, according to Auckland vice-president Dr Bridget Connor. She has personal experience of the issues that affect hospital doctors' working lives.

When she joined him, Terry Powell had been the doctors' advocate since 1985. From 1988 he contracted those services through his company he called Pair - Professional Association's Industrial Resources.

Come the 1991 Employment Contracts Act, the entrepreneurial Powells saw the opportunity to sell their employment contract negotiation skills beyond the young doctors.

Among those they added to their stable was the Sales Representatives Guild. But that led to considerable trouble when, in 1993, they were both convicted of fraud for rigging the guild's ballot in favour of compulsory membership.

Pair stood to gain $92,000 if compulsory unionism was carried and another $2500 for every 50 members beyond 1000. It would also be paid an annual $80,000 base payment.

The Powells continue to deny their guilt. Anecdotally there are doctors who remain unhappy about the Powells and refuse to join the RDA because of their presence. The association itself has never wavered in its trust in them to handle its unions affairs through their other company, CNS.

The RDA has no staff. It pays CNS around $300,000 a year to act as its secretariat, a figure based on the number of members. Curiously, neither Deborah Powell nor Connor is willing to reveal what doctors pay to be members of the RDA. But a rough calculation suggests it is around $300 annually. Membership hovers around 1800, representing 80 to 90 per cent of young doctors.

Apart from representation in negotiations, membership also brings benefits such as lower insurance premiums for professional indemnity and even income protection - deals CNS negotiated.

Connor says she cannot imagine running the RDA any other way. Busy doctors who are also RDA executive members don't have time to run a union office with liabilities such as hiring and firing staff. CNS takes care of all that. Plus, RDA membership is relatively transient. Young doctors stay that way for only about seven years. The Powells provide continuity and institutional memory.

The RDA also owns the Dominion Rd villa from which CNS is run and where the Powells stay when they are in Auckland which, for Deborah, is not that often because she spends a lot of time travelling the country. Interestingly, the RDA bought the house off the Powells, paying $360,000 for it in 1999.

When asked, Deborah Powell could not recall how this deal came about and became clearly irritated at being asked about what she considers private business dealings.

After checking with Terry Powell, she rang back to report that "the house was put on the market and the RDA approached us to buy it. Terry said it's quite common for unions to own property."

Connor, who is also on the RDA's national executive, recalls there was considerable discussion about buying the property. She says the executive "felt it was important the RDA have a home" and a place to keep records. She rejects the idea that buying the house from the Powells looks like an overly cosy arrangement. The Powells pay rent because, after all, the RDA's work is not the only union work they do from that address.

Although the RDA accounts for the bulk of their work, the Powells also represent laboratory workers, X-ray department technicians, radiation therapists and dental therapists.

These days they confine themselves to health-based unions, and have chosen not to grow beyond that.

Deborah Powell says she attends the executive meetings of all these unions "just like any CEO would" but has no voting rights and leaves the meeting when issues relating to the unions' contracts with CNS are discussed.

The decision to strike is decided by secret ballot, after she has advised members of all sides of an issue, she says.

None of the health-care unions for which the Powells act is affiliated to the Council of Trade Unions, unlike the Nurses Organisation and the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists.

Even though that makes their life lonely, says Deborah Powell, it is how the members like it - preferring to maintain political independence and, perhaps, objecting to throwing their lot in with the blue-collar crowd.

It might be seen as being churlish because they remain outside his fold, but CTU secretary Paul Goulter is less than admiring of the way CNS operates for its members.

He sees the Powells as hired guns who blaze in at contract negotiation time, whereas under the spirit of the Employment Relations Act, modern unions aim to form ongoing problem-solving partnerships with employers.

Nurses Organisation northern area manager James Ritchie agrees with that assessment, saying, "The RDA does not get into consultative forums with employers".

Ritchie, by the way, is on a salary somewhere between $50,000 to $80,000.

But Deborah Powell says that is an opinion grounded in ignorance of what CNS does, maintaining it does get involved in ongoing workforce issues.

And Connor, too, finds that assessment "absolutely unbelievable", saying the RDA is more than satisfied with the service it gets from the Powells.

Connor sees their $1 million fee for the meals dispute as entirely reasonable.

There is an argument that when you represent well-paid people, you are entitled to be well paid yourself. It is certainly how it appears to work for commercial lawyers.

More simply, why shouldn't people who work for unions be well paid?

Depending on the union, it might rankle with the membership to see their representatives, paid out of their fees, driving away from the picket-line in an Audi. With doctors, that is less of a consideration.

Ask Deborah Powell if her and Terry's lifestyle represents the new face of unionism as a well-paid career choice for professionals, and she agrees it probably does.

"Any CEO of a union has a lot of responsibility," she says. "People who take positions such as mine do have a commitment to the philosophy of emloyees' rights and representation. It would be hard to do this job effectively if you didn't genuinely believe in those concepts.

"But to rely on that as the sole reason for people to do the job I think is asking for trouble, quite frankly."

She thinks it would make it difficult to keep hold of good people. "You do have to pay people for responsibility." Which is why she wisely never objects to hospital chief executives' salaries.