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DOCTORS VERSUS LODGES.

SYDNEY Feb. 19. Nearly 155.000 members of friendly societies and about SSO doctors are the parties to a very pretty quarrel that is proceeding in Victoria over lodge matters. It is really a quarrel between unionists and the doc-torc are on strike. The lodges have been paying for medical attention 14s per member per year. . The doctors point out that thic is ‘'ridiculously low,” and that 20s is paid in New South Vales and 30s in New Zealand. So they demanded 20s. The dispute was submitted to a judge, and he. recommended ISs. The lodges offered 17s. and might have agreed to ISs, but the doctors insisted on 20s. The lodges were adamant, and so the doctors, after a certain date refused all lodge business. At the present moment the dispute is in abeyance, pending enquiries into the New South Wales system,, and the lodges are trying to get doctors outside the doctors organisation. As this is reallv a great and complicated unionist, fight, the position is not without humorous aspects. The British Medical Association, which is carrying on the light against the lodges,'is really a very powerful union, so strong and so jealous of its privileges that woe waits on the bold practitioner who would hang out his shingle without being a member. The friendlv societies are really a similar organisation of patients, present and prospective, and they are almost, wholly composed of keen trade unionists. ' So it becomes a question of the irresistible against the immovable. Dr. Rosenberg, of the Council ot the 8.M.A., who is leading the campaign against the lodges, lias demanded to be told how “staunch Labor men” who have been advertising for doctors outside the B.M.A. “can support these scab institutes”; and the points the finger of scorn at “the astounding spectacle of unionists advertising for non-unionists.” Tinder any other circumstances, to call a doctor a unionist would be to make him hvsterieal. But in the good cause lie cheerfully applies the opprobrious epithet to himself, and, with equal contempt for these niceties, the unionist calls in the. strike-breaker to beat the doctor’s union. The whole important and complicated question of the duty of the State in providing medical attention for the people, instead of leaving almost the whole of this service in the hands of private individuals, is now being discussed with animation. It, can he understood that the subjectappeals very strongly to the Australian temperament, and that, sooner or later, poor old blundering State enterprise will be driven in to tackle the problem.

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Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/GIST19180312.2.45

Bibliographic details

Gisborne Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 4815, 12 March 1918, Page 5

Word Count
424

DOCTORS VERSUS LODGES. Gisborne Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 4815, 12 March 1918, Page 5

DOCTORS VERSUS LODGES. Gisborne Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 4815, 12 March 1918, Page 5