Junior doctors’ strike action still threatens

Press, 30 August 1985, Page 5

Junior doctors’ strike action still threatens

PA Wellington Negotiations between the Government and junior doctors’ representatives adjourned in Wellington yesterday with threatened industrial action still likely. Auckland junior doctors have voted to strike while others throughout New Zealand plan to take softer industrial action from September 9 unless their claims for better overtime payments are met.

Health Department officials put a proposal to the Resident Medical Officers’ Association executive when they met on Wednesday, but this was

subsequently rejected.

The assocation executive yesterday offered a counter proposal but this has yet to be discussed in detail.

The junior doctors’ advocate, Mr Rod Trott, last evening described the Health Department proposals as unsatisfactory. He declined to outline either party’s proposals but said that there was some distance between the two.

“There is a fair gap in terms of positions and in terms of perception of what should and can be done,” Mr Trott said. He said the Resident Medical Officers’ Association was adamant that the

bottom-line position was that doctors should be paid for any overtime worked over 40 hours in one week.

“That is certainly quite a distance away from the Health Department’s position,” Mr Trott said.

The Government last week warned that if junior doctors walked off the job, it would scrap planned legislation for changing the way their pay and conditions were fixed. In Auckland, 200 junior doctors have voted to strike from September 9, but doctors in some other parts of the country, including Wellington, have said they will stop outpatient clinic work,

cease to be involved in most non-urgent admissions and implement Saturday morn-ing-type coverage during week-days. \ After consultations with the association last month, the Government agreed to change the negotiating mechanism for junior doctors from the Higher Salaries Commission to the State Services Condition of Employment Act. The Minister of State Services, Mr Stan Rodger, said last week, however, that he would be unwilling to proceed with legislation enacting the new mechanism “in its present form” in the face of direct action.