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.
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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.”
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