News
Media Statements
2 August 2007
DHBs throwing “petrol on the fire” – senior doctors
Senior doctors from the Nelson Marlborough region are accusing the DHBs of throwing petrol on the fire by misrepresenting doctors’ pay rates and what it says it has offered during pay negotiations.
The doctors met today in Blenheim in what was the 17th stopwork meeting to be held around the country. The meetings follow an impasse with DHBs following a year of unsuccessful negotiations.
Association of Salaried Medical Specialists executive director Ian Powell says senior doctors are already angry at the lack of action to remedy the health workforce crisis facing
“The situation was bad enough with an apparent refusal on the part of the DHB to recognise that we are facing a crisis in terms of the shortage of senior doctors. The negotiating team has now added petrol to the fire by giving the public a completely inaccurate picture of what is being offered.
Ian Powell says the figures being used by the DHBs has left senior doctors puzzled, as the pay rates and DHB offer has been inflated considerably.
“Senior doctors know what they are getting paid and they know what has been offered to them – and what the DHB is saying publicly does not reflect that. Not surprisingly the depth of feeling amongst doctors is intensifying.”
He says unless something is done now
“You only have to look at the offers being made to some of our members from across the Tasman. At the moment we just aren’t competing and we are losing good specialists.
“Doctors at the Blenheim meeting made it clear that the signal they were receiving was that they should retire, move to private practice or pack their bags and head to
The Blenheim meeting supported holding a postal vote of members to decide if lawful industrial action should be taken. There was also unanimous support to reject the DHBs’ current offer and condemn DHBs for their failure to negotiate genuinely.
The stopwork meetings continue tomorrow (Friday August 3) with senior doctors from MidCentral DHB. The final of the 26 meetings will be held next Thursday (August 9).
