News
Media Statements
2 August 2007
Don’t force industrial action say senior doctors
In the biggest stopwork meeting to date, almost 200 senior doctors from the Canterbury DHB today made an appeal to DHBs to acknowledge and act on the workforce issues facing the public health system.
Association of Salaried Medical Specialists Executive Director Ian Powell says the meeting overwhelmingly supported holding a postal vote of members to decide if lawful industrial action should be taken.
Ian Powell says the resolve of the members has been further strengthened due to the DHB misrepresenting its offer and the doctors’ current pay rates to the public.
“DHBs’ head negotiator Dr Nigel Murray has overstepped the mark by putting out information that is inaccurate and misleading. It’s underhand and again it seems the DHB is trying to take the attention away from the real issue which remains that patient safety will be compromised if we can not retain and recruit senior doctors. His conduct is inflaming the dispute and making it more difficult to resolve.
“There are serious shortages all around the country and it will not get better by itself. Members are urging DHBs to take this issue seriously and to sit down at the table in good faith. The last thing senior doctors want to do is to take industrial action, but it seems DHBs are forcing them down this path.”
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There was also unanimous support to reject the DHBs’ current offer and they also overwhelmingly condemned DHBs for their failure to negotiate genuinely, he says. The
The fourth week of stopwork meetings gets underway on Monday with senior doctors from the Auckland DHB meeting.
