Medical physicists who perform vital radiation therapy for cancer patients will go on strike for 48 hours from midnight tomorrow.
Medical physicists perform radiation therapy for cancer patients (file image). Photo:
The full strike comes after 12 weeks of partial strike action, which has seen physicists refuse to operate machinery outside of ordinary hours.
Action began when pay negotiations with District Health Boards (DHBs) stalled last October.
The medical physicists' union, the Association of Professional and Executive Employees (APEX), backs the strike action.
APEX advocacy leader David Munro said employers need to stop hiding from the problem.
"Whilst like all unions we support the government's emphasis on boosting the low paid, the fact of the matter is that this professional group spend eight years [studying] before they are let loose on a linear accelerator," he said.
"They are incredibly highly qualified, they are very sought after overseas and if we don't have any increase in pay or superannuation ... we're going to lose them."
Australian colleagues in the profession are often paid double that of their New Zealand counterparts.
Their employer's superannuation contribution is also three times larger, at 12.5 percent, compared to New Zealand's current rate of three percent.
Munro believed that was already having an effect on the industry.
"Late last year one newly qualifying physicist left for Perth to earn as much as the chief physicist at the DHB he was leaving.
"That is close to double what he would earn in New Zealand."
Medical physicists here were asking to have their superannuation contribution doubled to six percent to match that of a New Zealand doctor's, he said.
"These are the best medical physicists in New Zealand and we need to keep them in the public sector."
Medical physicists who work in the public sector make up 95 percent of the profession's workforce.
Seventy-five employees across six DHBs would take part in the action, Munro said.
Regular appointments have been rescheduled or deferred and no patients have had their therapy compromised for the strike action.
Bargaining talks, facilitated by the Employment Relations Authority, are set to take place next week on 23 and 24 February.
Plea to abandon strike action
The affected DHBs released a statement this afternoon, saying medical physicists should lift their strike action ahead of talks next week and when hospitals are under more pressure because of the Omicron outbreak.
"APEX has refused [this request] and has simply continued to issue more strike notices."
Kevin Snee Photo: RNZ / Andrew McRae
In the statement, Waikato DHB chief executive Kevin Snee said medical physicists were already the highest paid of the DHBs' allied, scientific and technical workforce.
"[Medical physicists have] an average base salary of $127,500 per annum for a standard 40-hour week."
"The initial increase the union issued would have amounted to a pay rise of more than 20 percent for some."
Dr Snee said the offer made by DHBs in October was consistent with other settlements reached with APEX, including for psychologists and medical laboratory scientists.
The six DHBs that employ APEX Union members (Auckland, Waikato, MidCentral, Capital and Coast, Canterbury and Southern) have received over 65 separate strike notices for full and partial strike action since November.
Snee said the impact on patient care of the strike action was difficult to quantify.
"In addition to disrupting patient care, the effect on other staff who work in the radiation oncology area shouldn't be under-estimated, especially at a time when there is increased pressure on the health system."