Senior medical staff offered early retirement

Press, 27 May 1989, Page 4

Senior medical staff offered early retirement

PA Wellington About 15 of Wellington’s most experienced surgeons, anaesthetists and physicians have been asked by the Wellington Hospital Board to take early retirement. Letters were sent to doctors in their late 50s and older about two weeks ago in one of the first steps in determining how the financially strapped board can cut its spending by reducing staff. Some of the doctors who have received the letters say they are angry. Their union, the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, is concerned it was not consulted about what it calls

plans to make people redundant. The retirement age is 65. The association’s executive director, Mr lan Powell, said yesterday the letters offering “enhanced early retirement” had all the elements of a redundancy agreement. He said the association should have been approached first and would write to the board to complain. There was a requirement under the award that where there were impending redundancies the union be given a month’s notice. “The key question is whether redundancies should occur at all. We haven’t accepted that redundancies should occur,”

said Mr Powell. It also had to be asked whether the board was likely to replace doctors who left or whether their positions would disappear. The chairman of the Hospital Board, Mrs Elisabeth Harper, said the letters were part of the cost-cutting effort. The acting chief executive, Mr John Yuill, was merely exploring options, she said. “We are just trying to find out who wants to leave early.” Asked if patient services would suffer, she said, “I can’t give any promises as we don’t know what is going to go ... but we are trying to keep all necessary services going.”