Talks between warring junior doctors and their employers have ended for the day but will resume on Thursday.
Emergency department doctor Tessa Ramsden (right) picketing outside Wellington Regional Hospital on 29 January, with Hutt Hospital doctor Hannah Thompson. Photo: RNZ / Karen Brown
The doctors and district health boards are at loggerheads over proposed changes to their multi-employer collective agreement, which ceases to exist at the end of this month.
The doctors ended their latest two-day strike last week and are poised to go out again next week.
Last-ditch talks with a mediator began in Auckland mid morning and were adjourned late this afternoon.
Junior doctors have written to the Health Minister seeking his intervention in the row.
DHBs are seeking to change the complex multi-employer pay deal and want the ability to alter rosters at public hospitals with agreement only of the doctors involved and their bosses.
The Resident Doctors Association says it must retain its ability to approve or rule out changes.
In a letter today to Health Minister David Clark, the union said he spoke to them in November about his commitment to the health and wellbeing of doctors, and it's time to follow through.
Senior union advocate David Munro said it was surprising that something could not be agreed.
"It seems to us that for a group that simply wants the status quo, the safer hours that they won at the last negotiations and a fair increase, it seems astonishing that we can't pull something together, and we wonder why the minister's not there trying to get the DHBs to move to a more reasonable position."
Mr Munro said with a third junior doctors strike next week, and balloting under way for a fourth, the minister must not delay.
"So we think we're getting pretty close to crunch point at the minister shouldn't be sitting on his hands."
Health Minister David Clark has declined to comment.
Talks will resume on Thursday, with both sides saying they will not comment in the meantime.