Employment Agreement Information

• Collective Agreement Information
• The new National DHB Collective Agreement (MECA)
• List of District Health Boards
• Other Employers
• ASMS-DHBNZ Agreement re Payment for Public Holidays

Collective Agreement Information

ASMS Industrial Role
The Association is a registered union that advises and represents members in respect of their employment agreements. It has negotiated collective employment agreements with all public hospitals and some with other employers. Where there is no collective agreement, the Association will advise members when they negotiate their own individual employment agreements.

According to our membership rules we may represent any doctor that is salaried and who requires an annual practising certificate to perform their salaried job, apart from those who work in universites.

The new National DHB Collective Agreement (MECA)

The settlement of the national DHB MECA was ratified on 19 December. This followed consideration of the indicative membership ballot. In summary, 93% of participants voted in favour of acceptance of the proposed settlement based on a 63% response rate. Per DHB the votes in favour ranged from 88% to 100% (response rates ranged from 42% to 81%, two were below 50%). The Executive concluded that this result provided a sufficient mandate to ratify. READ MORE

The DHBs have been formally advised of the National Executive’s ratification and are in the process of signing the new MECA; the unsigned version is available below.

The salary increase (delivered through translations to the new specialist and medical officer scales) is effective 1 January although this is unlikely to be paid out until February (or early March at the latest).

New DHB MECA (not all signatures as yet)

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List of District Health Boards

You may download a map of New Zealand showing the location of DHBs

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ASMS-DHBNZ Agreement re Payment for Public Holidays

Note: This paper includes the recent amendments to the Act, that come into force from 22 October 2004.

MEMO RE PAYMENT OF T1.5 TO SMOs WORKING ON A PUBLIC HOLIDAY
The purpose of this memo is to ensure SMOs are paid appropriately for working on public holidays, in accordance with the provisions of the Holidays Act 2003 (the Act).

The following method of calculation is recommended to DHBs, to achieve the least challengeable arrangement regarding payment to SMOs working on public holidays, under the Act’s public holiday provisions. In developing the calculation method, consideration has been given to the definition and calculation of relevant daily pay as specified in section 9 of the Act. The varying, irregular and at times unpredictable working hours of SMOs have also been considered.

The recommendations in this paper are agreed with ASMS.

It is possible that some DHBs have arrangements in place that already meet the requirements of the Act. It is not intended that SMOs receive a ‘premium on a premium’ where they are currently receiving payment for working on public holidays in a way that meets the legislative requirements.

It would be useful for those DHBs who consider they have arrangements in place that provide for payment of T1.5 and time off in lieu (an alternative holiday) for SMOs working on public holidays to discuss these with ASMS. These arrangements can then be addressed on a DHB by DHB basis.

It is also acknowledged that the recommended method of calculating payment may result in retrospective adjustments to the payments for work on public holidays already made to SMOs by some DHBs since the introduction of the Act.

Legislative Entitlement
The Act entitles employees who work on a public holiday to the greater of:

1. “the portion of the employee’s relevant daily pay (less any penal rates) that relates to the time actually worked on the day plus half that amount again;
2. or, the portion of the employee’s relevant daily pay that relates to the time actually worked on the day” (section 50(1)).

The penal rates referred to mean “ an identifiable additional amount that is payable to compensate the employee for working on a particular day or a particular type of day (for example a weekend or a public holiday)” (section 50(2)).

An employee is also entitled to time off in lieu (an alternative holiday) if “ the public holiday falls on a day that would otherwise be a working day for an employee; and the employee works (in accordance with his or her employment agreement) on any part of that day ” (section 56(1)).

Relevant Daily Pay
The Act introduces the concept of relevant daily pay. It has previously been common practice when calculating an SMO’s hourly rate for the purposes of applying a premium payment to divide the applicable base rate (as specified in the SMO’s Employment Agreement) by a specified divisor (usually 2080 or 2086) to arrive at an hourly rate. The relevant daily pay concept introduced in the Act requires that this practice be revisited.

Relevant daily pay is “ the amount of pay that the employee would have received had the employee worked on the day concerned ”. For many SMOs, the ‘amount of pay they would have received’ includes an availability allowance, as well as special allowances and other payments. These are not captured by using the SMO’s base rate.

Establishing a consistent method of calculating this for SMOs is problematic for a number of reasons, including:

- the varying number of call-back hours worked by SMOs from week to week;

- the flexibility enjoyed by a number of SMOs in aspects of their work (such as the
administrative and non-clinical component of their roles, along with some ward
rounds and clinic hours); and

- the varying ways in which SMO FTEs are calculated (including hours, tenths and
sessions).

The Act provides a formula for use where there are difficulties in determining an employee’s relevant daily pay (section 9(3)). This formula involves dividing the employee’s gross earnings for a four week period by the number of whole or part days the employee has worked during that period. The divisor (days worked) is determined from the SMO’s work schedule (or similar) and is the number of days the SMO was expected to work during the pay periods in question.

Applying this formula involves a manual transaction, dividing the gross earnings of the SMO for the two pay periods prior to the public holiday by the number of whole or part days the SMO worked during those pay periods, including any days the SMO was on paid leave.

This provides the SMO’s relevant daily pay. When divided by eight, this provides an hourly rate to be used in calculating the payment due to the SMO for the hours they have worked on the public holiday.

In order to receive payment, SMOs will need to submit a claim for the hours they were required to work on the public holiday. SMOs should receive payment for the hours worked within two pay periods of submitting their claim.

On-call
SMOs who are on-call on a public holiday but are not called in to work will not be entitled to any additional payment, but will receive an alternative holiday (section 59(3)).

When an SMO is on call, payment for work on a public holiday should include time spent by the SMO on work related telephone calls and time spent travelling to and from their place of work.

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