“Auckland Health Bosses Neglecting Senior Doctor Employment Conditions”
“Auckland District Health Board bosses are neglecting the employment conditions of their senior doctors despite them
being the glue that hold the city’s health system together,” said Mr Ian Powell, Executive Director of the Association
of Salaried Medical Specialists, today. Mr Powell was commenting on the additional payments to some pathologists.
“The standard collective conditions at Auckland compare unfavourably with other district health boards in the rest of
the country. Key entitlements such as salary scales, annual leave and superannuation are significantly inferior.”
“Instead management has favoured individual arrangements which has only benefited a few and have been divisive. It took
a recruitment and retention crisis in pathology for it to do something. Now the chickens are coming home to roost as
other specialties also have their problems.”
“If management had not neglected the core collective conditions of their senior doctors for so long the recruitment and
retention difficulties affecting Auckland would not have been so serious and may have been avoided.”
“We have been in drawn out collective contract negotiations with management in an attempt to resolve these problems
since May last year. Protracted negotiations for over 19 months only make this situation worse and cause the morale of
senior doctors to further deteriorate.”
“Management expects and gets A+ work from its senior doctors but only provides C- employment conditions. The patience of
their senior doctors is wearing thin,” concluded Mr Powell.
Ian Powell
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR