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Speaker 1: Senior doctors back on strike tomorrow and Wednesday, thirteen thousand

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Speaker 1: operations and appointments will be postponed, an extremely rare move

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Speaker 1: from Health New Zealand. They've implied applied rather to the

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Speaker 1: Employment Relations Authority to fix the terms and conditions of

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Speaker 1: a collective agreement with the doctors. Sarah Dalton's with the union,

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Speaker 1: the Association of Salary Medical Specialists with me tonight. Hi,

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Speaker 1: Sarah oh Eran. How are you doing very well? Thank you?

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Speaker 1: What does this mean that it's very unusual? I think

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Speaker 1: first time the public sector has done it. What does

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Speaker 1: it mean to go to the ARN ask for this?

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Speaker 2: Ah, well, we don't know, because, as you point out,

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Speaker 2: it hasn't happened before. We don't believe that the criteria

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Speaker 2: for this have been met or are met. So I

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Speaker 2: guess we'll be interested along with everyone else, to see

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Speaker 2: what happens. I don't know, I think, of course, I think,

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Speaker 2: But Health New Zealand, you know, if they put as

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Speaker 2: much time and energy into working on the sums and

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Speaker 2: thinking of about what money they could bring to the

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Speaker 2: table to settle this as they do on working out

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Speaker 2: how many patients think they think will be affected by

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Speaker 2: the strike, we will be in a better place. We

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Speaker 2: got into a real pickle with them last week in

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Speaker 2: bargaining because they brought some bigger numbers, but they seemed contradictory,

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Speaker 2: and we asked them to go away and do some

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Speaker 2: work with the finance people or their numbers people so

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Speaker 2: that we could be clear what they were putting on

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Speaker 2: the table. And they couldn't. They couldn't work it.

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Speaker 1: Out right, So they've gone to the RA. Could this

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Speaker 1: actually be a good thing for you? I mean, if

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Speaker 1: you look at some of the decisions that have been

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Speaker 1: made in the cases like this in the private sector,

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Speaker 1: they've gone, well, let's look around the market at what

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Speaker 1: people are being paid elsewhere and then fix the rate.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you could get Ossie pay potentially.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, wouldn't that be nice? Yeah? I doubt that. Look,

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Speaker 2: we'll see, we'll see where it gets to. We'll see

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Speaker 2: how it goes. We don't think on balance it is

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Speaker 2: the best way forward for our members, all the right

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Speaker 2: thing to do under the legislation. We don't think they're

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Speaker 2: being realistic. But you know, if we got to a

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Speaker 2: better place, so be it. We already have some experience

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Speaker 2: of working with the ERA because we've been through facilitation

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Speaker 2: in this bargaining and last which er overseas, and we

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Speaker 2: were not happy with the way the er Authority members

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Speaker 2: applied themselves to the task and we didn't find them

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Speaker 2: to take an independent view.

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Speaker 1: Does your negotiation continue in the meantime or is it

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Speaker 1: sort of on hold at the moment?

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Speaker 2: Sarah, Well, we're willing to keep discussions going, but when

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Speaker 2: we got to Thursday last week instead, we didn't think

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Speaker 2: we made enough progress to lift the strikes. Health New

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Speaker 2: Zealand packed their bags and left. We did say we

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Speaker 2: would be willing to continue discussions Friday over the weekend

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Speaker 2: they declined. But yeah, we're always willing to resume bargaining.

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Speaker 1: Sarah Dalton, executive director of the Association of Salary Medical Specialists.

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Speaker 1: That strikes still going ahead and it'll affect services tomorrow

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Speaker 1: and Wednesday. For more from Hither Duplessy Allen Drive, listen

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Speaker 1: live to News Talk SETB from four pm weekdays, or

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Speaker 1: follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.