22 hours Ago By Miklos Bolza
A health union's boast to take matters into its own hands and defy a court's order to not mount a rare doctors strike has put a major mental healthcare reform under threat. or signup to continue reading The NSW doctors union on Wednesday boldly announced it would continue with three days of industrial action, starting next Tuesday That is despite the state's Industrial Relations Commission ruling this week it must be scrapped. The state's first strike by doctors since 1998 was expected to cause widespread delays and force thousands of planned surgeries to be cancelled.
It follows the union's landmark arbitration in the same court to force a major pay rise for overworked public psychiatrists. The $20,000 in fines for defying the court's no-strike order was a small price to pay, the union had told doctors. But the industrial court hit back on Thursday, criticising the union for trying to "take matters into its own hands".
"The difficulty is that ASMOF (the union) seeks the commission's assistance while defying its orders," it said. "Consistent with its time-honoured approach in these matters, the commission does not propose to continue with the balance of the psychiatry staff arbitration proceedings while ASMOF maintains this position." The union has until Friday morning to scrap the strike or watch the ongoing psychiatry wage talks be cancelled.
"Industrial parties cannot expect to enjoy access to 'an impartial and adequately endowed arbitration system' while concurrently exercising their industrial strength by way of direct action to the detriment of the public interest," the commission said. Hospital doctors have repeatedly rejected a 10.5 per cent increase over three years back-paid to July, instead demanding 30 per cent.
Junior doctors in NSW receive the lowest base salary in the country, starting on $76,000 out of university behind Queensland's nation-leading $90,000. Health Minister Ryan Park on Wednesday said what the union was asking for was "simply not achievable". The minister said the one-off increase would cost more than $11 billion over four years, adding $75,000 to the annual pay packet of a middle-aged specialist doctor.
The government has adopted a similar stance in its battle to retain public psychiatrists. Faced with one third of positions unfilled at the start of the year, 206 of the remaining 292 mental health doctors submitted resignations. Dozens have followed through, with others taking higher-paid contract work as they plead for an immediate 25-per-cent pay bump.
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