ERA Intervention Could Break Doctors’ Pay Dispute Deadlock, Legal Expert Says

Ruth
Hill, Reporter

Getting
the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) to decide pay and
conditions for senior doctors may be the circuit-breaker
needed to end the impasse, according to one legal
expert.

In a move that is unprecedented for the public
sector, Health NZ is applying
to the ERA to “fix” the terms of its contract with the
Association of Salaried Medical Specialists.

The union
has panned the move as “unwarranted” and likely to make its
5500 members even angrier, as they prepare to walk
off the job for 48 hours next week.

Employment law
specialist Simon Schofield, who teaches at Auckland
University, said it may give both sides a way out if all
other options were exhausted.

“Genuinely, I think it’s
a good thing. I think it’s a good thing that Health NZ is
making this application because it signals an end – or a
possible end – to this dispute.

“And whether it’s in
favour of the doctors, or in favour of Health NZ, that’s
less of a worry to the public.”

It was very rare for
the ERA to be called on to “fix” terms in this way, and
unprecedented for it to happen in the public sector, he
said.

The only two cases in which the ERA had decided
terms were Jack’s
Hardware & Timber, involving two South Island Mitre
10 stores, and the environmental management services company
Nelmac.

In
the case of Jack’s Hardware, the ERA ultimately fixed a pay
rate that was comparable to what the opposition (Bunnings)
was paying its workers.

“In this environment, they
could look at what’s being offered [to doctors] in the
private sector and Australia to use in terms of
fixing.

“The whole health sector is under strain, you
can see that from the number of doctors and nurses heading
to Australia, so you can understand why the doctors feel
they need to strike in order to get a better
deal.

“That said, the minister [Simeon Brown] is clear
that Health NZ has got to provide a service, and in doing
that, it needs to ensure it does the best job it can with
the money available, and these are straitened financial
circumstances.

“So a balance has got to be
struck.

“This dispute is clearly a priority for the
minister.”

The question for the ERA would be whether
the parties had “got to the end of the road” and, if so,
what would “fixing” entail in such a challenging
environment.

As different parts of the health system
operated in such different ways, it was not possible to say
whether such an approach could work for nurses, who were
also ramping up strike action, he said.

“But
absolutely this could [be] applied in terms of other public
services, including teachers. The challenge, of course, with
regard to teachers as opposed to the health sector is
patients.

“While it’s inconvenient for teachers to
strike and for students to not be in school, there’s not
that same level of
urgency.”

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