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About ASMS
The Association has two main roles:
The Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS) is a professional association and union for salaried senior medical and dental officers.
1 Industrial
In this role we will advise and represent members in respect of their employment agreements. Our primary roles are to:
- negotiate employment agreements for our members;
- improve employment conditions for our members;
- assist our members to apply and enforce their employment agreements.
We also advise members in respect of their individual employment rights and entitlements and may represent them where those rights and entitlements are threatened. We will also review offers of employment made to members.
The ASMS unashamedly promotes collective employment agreements through which we have achieved major advances for members in quite a short period.
Our collective agreements provide flexibility and allow individuals to negotiate additional matters important to them while ensuring a high level of uniformity throughout New Zealand in respect of our members' core employment conditions. In this way they promote unity within the wider salaried medical and dental professions. We acknowledge however the benefits of supplementary individual job descriptions and will advise members in respect of them.
We discourage stand-alone individual agreements. These tend to place individuals in a vulnerable and weak position with their employers and are more likely to produce inequitable and disadvantageous outcomes. They also encourage secrecy and fragmentation within hospitals and the profession.
However the Association will assist members to negotiate individual agreements where we do not have a collective employment agreement with their employer.
Many of our members also have private practices but the Association does not advise or otherwise assist them in respect of their private practices. Our primary role is to advise and represent members in respect of their employment relationship with their employers.
2 Professional and Policy
In this role the ASMS:
- Promotes and supports the right of equal access for all New Zealanders to high quality health services;
- Articulates our members’ professional concerns and interests to the Government and its various agencies, employers and the public at large;
- Publicly supports and defends members who are unjustifiably attacked in public whether by politicians, employers or members of the public;
- Advises and assists members in their dealings with the media;
- Liaises with the Medical Protection Society to ensure effective representation for members facing disciplinary proceedings in clinical matters which may have consequences in respect of their employment;
- On the basis of our own experience and research we contribute to and promote informed public debate on matters relating to the provision of high quality health services to all New Zealanders.
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