Source: Association of Salaried Medical Specialists
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon must give assurances the Minister of Health will stop breaching employment law by undermining the collective bargaining process.
Simeon Brown’s actions yesterday represent an unlawful intervention in the bargaining between Te Whatu Ora and ASMS.
Bargaining has not “broken down”. Just last week ASMS met with Health New Zealand and the Public Service Commission to discuss next steps. The day before the Minister’s letter arrived Dale Bramley spoke with ASMS to discuss further steps for bargaining.
ASMS says Brown does not understand employment law and should have received advice before making comments.
As well as being misinformed, the Minister’s proposal is disingenuous. The fundamental barrier to a settlement between Health New Zealand and the senior doctors is the failure of his government to allocate adequate funds for the safe staffing of our public health system.
If Health New Zealand had appropriate funding and staffing levels this dispute would not be happening.
The Minister’s actions are highly unusual and a direct intervention in bargaining, which is unlawful.
Collective bargaining is a process governed by law and the parties to collective bargaining have specific rights and responsibilities. The Minister seems unaware of this fact.
The Minister does not appear to understand the law. His actions in combination with the response of Health NZ Chair Lester Levy could be interpreted as undermining the bargaining process.
ASMS takes issue with the minister’s misinformation about disruptions to patient care. “In his letter the Minister claims more than 4,000 surgeries, appointments and treatments were cancelled due to the May 1 strike,” ASMS Executive Director Sarah Dalton says. “An Official Information Act Request revealed this figure to be a quarter of that at 1,037.
“A further request to discover how many appointments were made on a typical day, and cancelled, for comparison is months overdue because Health New Zealand cannot locate the data. If that is the case, where is the Minister getting his advice about cancellations from?
“It screams of recent cover up attempts we saw by HNZ to withhold data from the New Zealand Nurses Organisation about safe-staffing.”
The biggest impediment to patients accessing health care is the Government’s failure to safely staff our hospitals on a day-to-day basis. “Every day theatres and clinics are cancelled due to staffing gaps.
“At the same time Health NZ has paid out more than $200M in the past 12 months on temporary staff (locums) and additional duties payments for existing staff to cover the work of missing colleagues.
“It makes no sense to pay ever increasing locum rates while clamping down on improved terms and conditions that will attract and retain desperately needed specialist doctors and dentists – especially in smaller and rural hospitals.”
ASMS lodged a revised claim with Health New Zealand during facilitated bargaining with a view to reach a compromise.
“We are happy to get back around the table with HNZ,” Dalton says. “They tell us they have a shared commitment to see improved staffing levels around the country. We need to see evidence of that.”
