Patients face delay if lab. staff take action

Press, 29 January 1986, Page 9

Patients face delay if lab. staff take action

Patients in hospitals in Christchurch and elsewhere in New Zealand are likely to face delays to routine surgery if threatened industrial action by medical laboratory technologists goes ahead on February 7.

Details of the national industrial action planned will not be disclosed until Friday says the Institute of Medical Laboratory Technology. Until then hospital administrators will not know exactly what arrangements to make to minimise the impact of the industrial action on hospital functions. In some parts of New Zealand only emergency testing would be done, said the institute’s president, Mr Colvin Campbell,, yesterday. “Patients may spend many extra days in hospital before being sent home as a result of the action,” he said.

The institute has said the blood transfusion service might halt nationally as most blood staff are employed as laboratory workers.

“Blood tests which monitor the level of drugs, diagnostic testing for heart and kidney disease, and tests to stabilise diabetes may all cease.” The institute, representing 2000 laboratory workers, gave 14 days notice of industrial action on January 23. It said it deeply regretted being forced into industrial action by the refusal’ of employers to recognise its members’ worth to the health service and community.

The Institute’s vicepresident, Mr Kevin

McLoughlin, said this week that talks between the institute and the Health Services Personnel Commission broke down on January 10 because the pay offer was not adequate. The Health Services Committee offer to most laboratory workers (staff technologists) was an average of 2.89 per cent more than the 19.5 per cent annual adjustment for State health servants.

Staff technologists with five years training and another four or five years experience are seeking $31,000 a year. They were offered $25,200 gross, Mr Campbell said. Senior laboratory assistants, some with about 14 years’ experience, are seeking $27,550 a year. They had been offered $21,668 gross, he said. The institute cited a 23 per cent turnover of medical laboratory tech-

nologists and a decline in the growth of their salaries A particular concern, said the institute, was that many hospital boards had not introduced screening and vaccination of laboratory workers for hepatitis B. «’P! The Minister of Health, Dr Bassett, has said negotiations will resume when workers withdraw their threat of industrial action.