Sarah Dalton: Association of Salaried Medical Specialists executive director speaks ahead of upcoming doctors' strike

The senior doctor's union is criticising Health New Zealand's decision to call in the Employment Relations Authority to sort out pay talks.

Around 6000 doctors and dentists are walking off the job nationwide tomorrow and Wednesday.

The ERA's been requested to fix the terms and conditions of a collective agreement - in a move unprecedented for the public sector.

Association of Salaried Medical Specialists Executive Director Sarah Dalton says they've done some work with the ERA in the past.

"We were not happy with the way the ERA authority members applied themselves to the task, and we didn't find them to take an independent view."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Senior doctors back on strike tomorrow and Wednesday, thirteen thousand
operations and appointments will be postponed, an extremely rare move
from Health New Zealand. They've implied applied rather to the
Employment Relations Authority to fix the terms and conditions of
a collective agreement with the doctors. Sarah Dalton's with the union,
the Association of Salary Medical Specialists with me tonight. Hi,

(00:22):
Sarah oh Eran. How are you doing very well? Thank you?
What does this mean that it's very unusual? I think
first time the public sector has done it. What does
it mean to go to the ARN ask for this?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Ah, well, we don't know, because, as you point out,
it hasn't happened before. We don't believe that the criteria
for this have been met or are met. So I
guess we'll be interested along with everyone else, to see
what happens. I don't know, I think, of course, I think,
But Health New Zealand, you know, if they put as

(00:56):
much time and energy into working on the sums and
thinking of about what money they could bring to the
table to settle this as they do on working out
how many patients think they think will be affected by
the strike, we will be in a better place. We
got into a real pickle with them last week in
bargaining because they brought some bigger numbers, but they seemed contradictory,
and we asked them to go away and do some

(01:17):
work with the finance people or their numbers people so
that we could be clear what they were putting on
the table. And they couldn't. They couldn't work it.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Out right, So they've gone to the RA. Could this
actually be a good thing for you? I mean, if
you look at some of the decisions that have been
made in the cases like this in the private sector,
they've gone, well, let's look around the market at what
people are being paid elsewhere and then fix the rate.
I mean, you could get Ossie pay potentially.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah. Well, wouldn't that be nice? Yeah? I doubt that. Look,
we'll see, we'll see where it gets to. We'll see
how it goes. We don't think on balance it is
the best way forward for our members, all the right
thing to do under the legislation. We don't think they're
being realistic. But you know, if we got to a
better place, so be it. We already have some experience

(02:04):
of working with the ERA because we've been through facilitation
in this bargaining and last which er overseas, and we
were not happy with the way the er Authority members
applied themselves to the task and we didn't find them
to take an independent view.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Does your negotiation continue in the meantime or is it
sort of on hold at the moment?

Speaker 2 (02:26):
Sarah, Well, we're willing to keep discussions going, but when
we got to Thursday last week instead, we didn't think
we made enough progress to lift the strikes. Health New
Zealand packed their bags and left. We did say we
would be willing to continue discussions Friday over the weekend
they declined. But yeah, we're always willing to resume bargaining.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Sarah Dalton, executive director of the Association of Salary Medical Specialists.
That strikes still going ahead and it'll affect services tomorrow
and Wednesday. For more from Hither Duplessy Allen Drive, listen
live to News Talk SETB from four pm weekdays, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.