Treatment delays amid strike action

The Southern District Health Board is working to understand how cancer services will be impacted when 10 medical physicists walk off the job on Monday.

Physicists throughout New Zealand have been holding 24-hour stoppages since yesterday; with Southern DHB’s staff set to hold theirs on Monday, followed by two weeks of only working during normal business hours.

Apex union advocacy lead David Munro said the strike action followed wage negotiations reaching an impasse, but a spokesperson for the six DHBs that employ medical physicists said their demands were ‘‘outside comparable health sector settlements’’.

Medical physicists oversee the delivery of radiotherapy – which is delivered in Dunedin for those living in the Southern DHB catchment area – ensuring radiation equipment like Linear Accelerators are properly calibrated.

They spend between 8 and 12 years training for the job.

Medical physicists had been caught up in the public sector pay freeze, Munro said, but with salaries not keeping up with inflation he feared New Zealand would lose members of its small but highly skilled workforce to Australia, where newly qualified physicists earned the same as a chief physicist in New Zealand, he said.

‘‘We have been working to stem this ‘brain drain’ for more than a decade. Our system simply cannot continue to under-value this workforce,’’ Munro said.

The union had tried to be imaginative with its bargaining, like increasing superannuation contributions, but there had been no appetite from DHBs to think creatively, he said.

Cancer treatments would be delayed, Munro said, and while members ‘‘hate having to resort to strike action at any time’’ they needed employers to return to the bargaining table with a fresh mandate to address salaries and superannuation.

New Zealand’s medical physicists work for the Auckland, Waikato, MidCentral, Capital and Coast, Canterbury and Southern District Health Boards.

Speaking on behalf of the six, Waikato DHB chief executive Dr Kevin Snee said strike action was not the way to resolve pay talks.

‘‘This is a very busy time for our hospitals and managing a strike is the last thing we need on top of everything else that’s happening right now,’’ he said.

Medical physicists were claiming significantly more than what the APEX union had accepted for other roles, Snee said, he believed the latest offer from DHBs was fair and consistent with settlements by other professions represented by the union.

Medical Physicists had a three per cent pay rise last year, he said, and have been offered salary increases of $1200 from September 2022 and lump sum payments of $1000.

This was almost the same as the offer recently accepted by APEX for the Psychology and Medical Laboratory Scientist members, Snee said.

‘‘DHBs remain available to resume pay talks to try and find a settlement and prevent further disruption,’’ Snee said.

Southern DHB Medicine, Women’s and Children general manager Simon Donlevy said all urgent cases would be prioritised to ensure their cancer treatment was not delayed.