MECA – frustration meets facilitation

Efforts to resolve the deadlock in the MECA negotiations and ultimately reach a settlement have now moved to facilitation.

Earlier this month the Employment Relations Authority accepted a joint application from ASMS and the DHBs for facilitated bargaining. Under facilitated bargaining, an Authority member works with both sides in an effort to bring a resolution. They meet separately with the parties in the first instance and review each side’s position, before bringing them together for joint discussions. This joint meeting was due to happen in Wellington on March 18th. The outcome might be to arrange further meetings, or the Authority member could deliver written recommendations. The recommendations are not binding but could help move towards a negotiated settlement. Look out for updates in your inbox. ASMS is continuing to put pressure on the Government over the DHBs’ bargaining approach and comments that all health workers are required to experience a “year of pain” before they can expect a pay increase. This is happening at high level meetings and in the media. We have also been using recent JCCs to let DHB Chief Executives know how poorly served they have been by the DHB’s negotiating team, whose determination to give “no offer” responses in place of reasoned discussions have led to the current negotiation difficulties. In addition, there are indications that with inflation running at almost 6%, the Government’s pay restraint guidelines to the public sector are increasingly difficult to justify. Senior Government figures are no longer promoting them.

@ASMSNZ

MECA expiry – what happens on 31 March?

The MECA formally expired on 31 March 2021. Normally a collective agreement only remains in force for 12 months after its formal expiry date. This is to give the parties time to negotiate a new agreement. If a new agreement has not been settled, then 12 months after expiry, employees would usually be deemed to be employed on an individual employment agreement based on the collective agreement. That is, while your terms of employment would continue as they are, they would come under an individual agreement. However, in April 2020, by Order in Council, the Government suspended the 12 month “double expiry” provision. Effectively the expiry clock stopped ticking on all collective agreements and will not start ticking again until the relevant Epidemic Notice is revoked. An Epidemic Notice has been continuously in force since 24 March 2020, before the MECA expired, and understandably will continue in place for a while yet. Only once revoked will the 12-month expiry period start ticking.

Late last year we asked members to write to Government ministers and DHB executives to express in their own words, their personal frustration and anger over the DHB negotiating team’s entrenched position and attitude. There was a great response. Hearing directly from members sends a powerful message. Here is an abridged example of just one of the letters sent to the Health Minister Andrew Little.

Dear Mr Little 18 February 2022

Re: ASMS MECA negotiations

I am a Senior Medical Officer at Auckland DHB. I am writing to you, despondent at the nature of the MECA negotiations between ASMS and the DHBs. I have been a doctor for 21 years, and a specialist for 11. This is the lowest that I have seen morale amongst my consultant colleagues, and the health workforce in general. I worked in Australia for six years, initially completing a fellowship in a field for which there was no experience in New Zealand and was committed to returning to work in the public health system in Aotearoa. You will no doubt be aware of the significant pay disparity for medical specialists between Australia and New Zealand. In 2016, this represented a 30% pay cut when I made the decision to return home. I do not regret this decision, but equally I cannot judge my fellow New Zealand-trained specialists who have made Australia their home, inadvertently adding to the critical medical workforce shortages in Aotearoa New Zealand.

The Covid-19 pandemic clearly represents an unprecedented challenge to the New Zealand health system. The Labour Party was well aware of the systemic decimation of our system when you came into government in 2017, and I welcomed your government's additional investment in health. But for our union representatives to be told that we "must endure a year of pain" before we could even be offered a settlement equivalent to inflation is frankly, insulting. In my specialist area our outpatient clinic has been added to the DHB Risk Register because patients are now waiting over nine months for a first specialist appointment. That weighs heavily on me. In December, I performed emergency surgery on a patient who had been waiting for elective surgery for a supposed benign condition since February. She should have had surgery by July 2021. Instead, she has now been diagnosed with cancer, and will require chemotherapy. I carry the burden of these situations, which are beyond my control. And yet, day after day, I get up, don my face mask, sanitise my hands, and put on my "game face" for another day at the front line. All of the leading figures in government and the Ministry of Health have thanked us for our hard work and told the public how proud they can be of our health system. But your thanks ring hollow when I am faced with rising costs of living. I do not have the choice of moving to a less expensive city than Auckland. My colleagues and I have endured "our year of pain". In fact, it has been YEARS of pain, with no end in sight. All we want is to not fall behind as inflation rises. We're not unrealistic. We know that it does not play well in the court of public opinion for "rich doctors" to complain about our pay. Our DHB managers know that our professionalism and commitment to our vocation, to our patients and to our colleagues, means that we are unlikely to walk off the job and stand on a picket line. But this is the closest I have come to breaking those promises to my patients. We talk about burnout, about moral injury. I am now at the point of being burnt out from burnout. I implore you, as an experienced unionist yourself. Please listen to the frontline workers and pay us more than lip service. It is the very least that we deserve. He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata. Nga - mihi nui, Dr Saman Moeed, MBChB, FRANZCOG

Senior Medical Officer Auckland DHB