AN ADDED BARGAIN

ANDREW CHICK, JOURNALIST

As part of the process to renegotiate our collective agreement with Te Whatu Ora, ASMS undertook a claims survey of affected members and the findings were presented at paid union meetings around the country in July.

Over 17 days in May, ASMS received responses from 2,417 members employed by Te Whatu Ora as part of the pre-bargaining claims survey.

The gender split for responses matched ASMS’ membership. In terms of ethnicity, responses were roughly proportional to the limited data ASMS has. The distribution of responses by district was also generally reflective of the wider membership.

Base pay

Unsurprisingly, adequacy of base salary was rated as the most important claim, with two-thirds of respondents rating it extremely important. Wellbeing allowances were the only area where less than 85 per cent of respondents rated the area important or extremely important.

Existing allowances

The question about existing allowances indirectly identified a lack of awareness around special contributions allowances. While 70 per cent of respondents rated all other allowances at least important if not more so, less than half considered special contributions important.

But members also noted the application of allowances was creating inequities.

“It is very clear that there are people getting massive amounts of money for say a Saturday operating list,” one member noted, “but someone doing registrar work on a weekend gets significantly less, despite it being way more gruelling, dangerous and awful.”

As another noted, “The challenge with all the ‘extra’ allowances is that they are used to game the system, and thus create inequity between individuals, services and hospitals. They contribute to a gender divide too.”

New allowances

The survey asked members to consider four possible new allowances: rural hospital, public only, hard-to-staff specialty and hard-to-staff hospital. The hard-to-staff allowances received the greatest support, but all were considered important or extremely important by two-thirds of members.

Private practice

Over a third of members in the survey were doing private clinical or surgical practice (37 per cent). This dove-tailed closely with the 65 per cent who rated a claim for a public-only allowance important or extremely important.

Non-clinical time

Questions about rostered non-clinical time raised some concerning results. Almost a quarter of respondents said they didn’t get any. Even those who do did found it eaten up by both general time pressures and short-staffing.

As one respondent noted, “In theory I do [have rostered non-clinical time]. In practice it is filled with patient-related admin tasks, so most non-clinical tasks are usually done after hours and at weekends.”

Another respondent wrote, “It has proven to be unrealistic to roster nonclinical time in the past. When needed, I will block out time in advance, sort of like leave.”

“My contract states zero rostered non-clinical time,” noted a third respondent, “although allowance is made for 8 hours of ‘valid’ non-clinical time per week. Specifically, my contract cynically allows for 3 hours of ‘journal reading’ each week. Ha, flipping ha! Actually realising any nonclinical time is another story altogether.”

Whether the time was rostered or not, only 16 per cent of SMOs got to access at least the 30 per cent of non-clinical time recommended in the SECA. Over two fifths got less than 20 per cent.

Non-salary issues

When asked to rank the importance of recovery time, SMO staffing ratios, RMO staffing ratios, non-clinical time and access to admin support, members showed a clear preference. Just shy of half rated patient staffing ratios for SMOs as the most important.

While only a third of members had ever sought to increase their nonclinical time in line with SECA recommendations, those who had tried had been unsuccessful by a ratio of 3 to 1.