Kia ora koutou We have had ten days of MECA negotiations, and we are still waiting for the DHBs to come up with an acceptable offer. They have accepted a handful of our claims, but none which would make any positive difference to your pay or the current staffing crisis. When it comes to key items such as increased rates for after-hours and shift work, or an increase to base salaries, their answer has been a firm NO. Stopwork meetings We have reached crunch time and we will be holding stopwork meetings at every DHB. You need to hear the detail of what has been offered, and what our position is. We want you to have the chance to ask questions and give us feedback for your negotiating team. The meetings will be held in August. You can find details of when and where your stopwork is happening here. Formal stopwork notices have been sent to DHB Chief Executives. How we got here It’s taken a while to get to this point. The MECA negotiating team met with DHB representatives in Wellington on 26 and 27 May for the ninth and tenth days of face-to-face discussions. We asked the DHBs to bring their best offer to the table. The DHBs agreed that senior doctors and dentists are valuable members of the health workforce and expressed gratitude for the work you have done through Covid. They also acknowledged that one in two senior doctors and dentists suffer from burnout, and agreed there are serious staffing pressures, shortages, and chronic problems filling SMO vacancies. BUT that acknowledgement does not extend to a pay increase. In fact, to date the DHBs have not even been prepared to put a cost-of-living increase (CPI adjustment) on the table. There comes a point in negotiations when both parties need to put their best offer forward. From a union perspective this means looking hard at the claim and deciding what is most important to members. We want to get to a fair and reasonable settlement. We know there are many other demands on your time. We know that many of you would prefer to focus on the avalanche of clinical demand you currently face. What we asked for ASMS’ approach throughout has been careful and measured. Recognising the government’s call for pay restraint, our team agreed to refine our claims as follows:
The DHB negotiators agreed to take our claims back to the Chief Executives. We suggested that they needed to give them serious consideration. DHB response unacceptable The DHB advocate met with us again in late June. Their response to our revised claims was disappointing. The DHBs continue to hold a position that there must be no new money for SMO salaries this year (that is a zero percent offer) and maybe, just maybe, one percent next year. They did suggest that those of you who (a) worked for a DHB during 2020 and (b) have a positive CME balance could effectively draw some money out of that as a lump sum. That is, you could fund your own $5,000 lump sum increase on an individualised basis. If you are new to DHB employment, or if your CME balance is low, you get nothing. We told the DHBs that is unacceptable, and your branch officers backed this up at their meeting last Friday. It's your right to attend stopworks All employees who are members of a union have the right to attend a stopwork meeting (MECA clause 33). The meetings run for two hours and are paid (they take place during your normal hours of work). They are not a form of industrial action and DHBs must help ensure members are able to attend. This means all elective work must be postponed during that time. We have organised stopwork meetings at every DHB. We have also told the DHBs we are willing to meet with them on 30 July. We want them to re-engage. We are genuinely interested in meeting with them if they have a substantive offer for us. If that meeting goes ahead, we will give you a full update at the stopworks. Your attendance at the stopworks is very important. Posters advising you of stopwork details in your DHB will be going up in your workplaces. Please take the time to check the timetable and talk to your colleagues. We need your support to make these meetings as well attended and effective as possible. We have also put together some FAQs around stopworks which may answer any questions you have. All the information is on our website at www.asms.org.nz/stopworks. You can also write to us at meca@asms.org.nz Ngā mihi. Lloyd Woods Sarah Dalton
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