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Junior doctors begin five-day strike
Thousands of junior doctors are walking off the job again today for an unprecedented fifth strike.
Junior doctors striking outside Wellington Hospital in January. Photo: RNZ / Karen Brown
The five-day strike - everywhere except Canterbury - begins at 8am and will end early Saturday.
Members of the junior doctors' union, the Resident Doctors' Association are striking at all public hospitals except in Canterbury which has been excluded because of the recent terror attacks.
"We're going on strike because we want to
keep our current contract" - Courtney Brown duration
3:46
from Morning Report
Click a link to play audio (or right-click to
download) in either
MP3 format or in OGG format.
District health boards say they cannot estimate how many non-urgent operations, appointments and clinics have been postponed because of the strike.
They said last week this is because the effects will vary, and some hospitals are waiting to see how many doctors will be working before they make a decision.
But Counties Manukau DHB in South Auckland said on Friday 680 letters had gone out to patients advising them their operations would be deferred if the strike proceeded.
Hospitals have stressed emergency and acute care will be their priority during the strike.
The main sticking point is that district health boards want hospital chief executives to have the final say over working arrangements - including rosters - rather than the union head office.
Junior doctors say they are striking to prevent clawbacks to long-standing terms and conditions of employment.
'There will be ongoing strike action'
A junior doctor at Hutt Valley DHB and president of the Resident Doctors' Association, Courtney Brown, told Morning Report doctors wanted the current employment contract to remain unchanged.
The current contract had limits on hours worked with particular regard to rosters.
"Currently, we have provisions in our contract, particularly limits on how many days ... how many night shifts ... and how many hours we can work in a row."
These can be varied with the union's agreement, Ms Brown said.
"What the DHBs want to do is either agree with an individual RMO (Resident Medical Officer) locally. However, if those RMOs locally disagree they want the CEO to have the final say anyway.
"They want to be able to enforce changes upon us without our agreement."
The previous four strikes have resulted in them going to facilitation, she said.
"The point of this fifth strike is to try to ensure that we get a settlement at the end of that process.
"There will be ongoing strike action until we get a contract we can settle."
District Health Boards spokesperson Dr Peter Bramley told Morning Report this strike was "disappointing and very frustrating".
"We formally asked the RDA to lift this
strike" - Dr Peter Bramley duration 6:21
from Morning Report
Click a link to play audio (or right-click to
download) in either
MP3 format or in OGG format.
"We absolutely hope there's not another strike. This strike is completely unreasonable and unnecessary."
He said through all of last week, teams had been preparing to ensure they could provide safe, acute and emergency care.
"We formally asked the RDA to lift this strike. We don't see this strike at all being necessary given that we've already agreed to meet at facilitation on 9 May."
Dr Bramley said the DHBs were not looking to clawback any of the employment conditions.
"What we're wanting though at a local DHB level to have this flexibility to make the roster changes that support better care, a better medical team and better training for RMOs.
"At the moment it's a one-size-fits-all approach and unfortunately, the union has the veto power.
"We want changes to that power of veto."
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