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SUBMISSION TO THE TRANSPORT AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS (PROBATIONARY EMPLOYMENT) AMENDMENT BILL
19 MAY 2006
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 The Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (the Association) represents
salaried senior doctors and dentists. The Association was formed in April 1989
to advocate and promote the common industrial and professional interests of
our members.
1.2 The Association has nearly 2,800 members, the majority of whom are
employed by District Health Boards (DHBs). About 92% of senior doctors and
dentists employed by public hospitals run by DHBs are members of the
Association. These members’ conditions have been governed by a multi-
employer collective agreement since July 2003.
1.3 While most of our membership works in secondary and tertiary care in the
public sector, a number work in primary care and outside DHBs. We have
members at hospices, community trusts, iwi health authorities, union health
centres, the New Zealand Family Planning Association and the New Zealand
Blood Service.
1.4 The Association is affiliated to the Council of Trade Unions (the CTU). We
support the CTU submission. If the Committee summarises submissions in
order to gauge the strength of support for any particular provision the
Association should be counted as supporting each of the points raised by the
CTU.
1.5 This submission is therefore limited to any additional points we feel should be
made because of the Association’s position as a union bargaining for scarce,
skilled, highly trained professionals who are committed to the development of
an equitable and excellent public health service.
1.6 The Association does not wish to make oral submissions.
2 DISMISSAL ON WHIM
2.1 The Bill is unfair in that it allows dismissal by the employer on whim in the first
90 days of employment. Because no reason has to be given by the employer
this provision would allow free rein to the employer who is a sexual harasser,
is racially prejudiced, anti-union or simply takes against an employee for no
good reason.
2.2 Despite the protections under human rights legislation, because dismissal can
occur without cause, workers will not know why they have been dismissed and
therefore are unlikely to be able to access these provisions.
2.3 In the DHB sector the employer’s right to dismiss on whim is likely to be at
least partially circumscribed by policy and the Code of Good Faith (Schedule
1B to the ERA). In the voluntary and community sector these protections are
not in place.
2.4 The Association has dealt with several instances where a doctor employed by
community organisations has faced dismissal simply because they wished to
adhere to appropriate medical standards in a situation where the employer
was unused to these or reluctant to introduce them.
2.5 At present the Association is dealing with a situation where a very recently
employed doctor recruited from overseas has opposed a bullying culture in a
community organisation and has been threatened with dismissal. If this Bill
was law the bullying that is endemic in the organisation would not have been
exposed and the doctor could have been instantly dismissed without cause.
2.6 The public is entitled to rely on medical and dental professionals to speak out
on issues of professional concern and patient safety. This right is protected in
many of the collective agreements the Association negotiates. Some
organisations have resisted these provisions in both individual and collective
agreements.
2.7 At present employers would be most reluctant to dismiss a doctor while citing
as a reason that the doctor had spoken out on issues of patient safety. If the
employer is not required to give a reason they need have no such qualms.
2.8 This Bill is likely to decrease patient safety in that a doctor who challenges
unsafe practices in this sector could face instant dismissal with no reason
given.
3 EFFECTS ON RECRUITMENT
3.1 The medical workforce in
doctors who received their initial degree overseas. Medical Council figures
suggest that these doctors form at least 35% of the doctors practising in
Zealand
than those of other countries, is dependent on recruitment of skilled overseas
doctors.
3.2 The Association places considerable importance on the recruitment of doctors.
We have a regular advertisement on BMJCareers.com which links to our
website which features vacancies at New Zealand DHBs.
3.3 The Association advises many doctors who have received a job offer from a
New Zealand DHB prior to them taking up employment in
would be put off by the knowledge that they could lose the job without cause
in the first 90 days of their employment and will not proceed with their
application. A further number would take pause before uplifting their family
and moving to the other side of the world with this level of insecurity. It would
be hard to think of a greater disincentive for specialists considering coming to
3.4 The possibility would be particularly off putting for specialists with a highly
specific qualification who are thinking of moving their families to small
provincial towns for lifestyle reasons. Should their employer take against them
they would find no other jobs available in their speciality and would have to
face uplifting their family a second time in a very short period.
3.5 Doctors recruited from overseas already have to meet the stringent standards
for registration rightly required by the Medical Council of New Zealand which,
in many cases, includes a year’s provisional registration with a vocational
scope of practice. The additional burden of a 90 day period where they could
be dismissed for no reason will discourage some of these doctors from
applying for jobs in
Zealand
3.6 Because we cannot compete with
employers seeking to employ doctors emphasise other factors such as the
general environment here. The employment environment is a crucial part of
that.
3.7 A less widely discussed effect of the Bill is to introduce a new form of
employment governed by neither individual agreement nor collective
agreement. It is hard to know what a DHB will offer to a specialist it is
attempting to recruit. Both DHBs as employers and specialists as applicants
are therefore likely to find employment offers at least confusing and at most
incomprehensible.
3.8 The probationary period would also apply to any senior doctor who changes
employer. This would put barriers in the path of any senior doctor or dentist
changing DHBs and would place a new barrier in the way of the laborious
stitching together of a collaborative, cooperative public health service that has
recently been embarked on.
