Second Wellington GP strike planned for tomorrow

Doctors at five Wellington general practices are due to strike for an hour tomorrow morning, the second in a series of walkouts over the exclusion of their dentist colleagues from their collective employment agreement.

Twenty-one doctors at Iwi health provider practices in Porirua, Cannons Creek, Titahi Bay and Newtown plan to strike from 9am until 10am on Monday 10 December, with further stoppages scheduled for 13, 18 and 19 December, followed by a full-day strike on Christmas Eve. They also went on strike last Friday 7 December.

“It really illustrates how strongly they feel about their employer’s decision to exclude dentists from the collective agreement covering doctors,” says Lloyd Woods, Senior Industrial Officer at the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS).

“These doctors and dentists all work as part of the medical team, but for some inexplicable reason their employer wants their employment conditions to be treated separately. It’s unfair and quite different from the collective agreement covering both senior doctors and dentists who work in public hospitals.”

Mr Woods says doctors at the practices are committed to achieving equity for their dental colleagues.

“Thomas Jefferson famously said: ‘On matters of style swim the current, on matters of principle stand like a rock’, and that’s what our members are doing on this issue. They don’t stand to gain anything financially by having dentists in the same collective agreement, but it really is a matter of fairness.”

ENDS

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