The New Zealand Resident Doctors' Association issued a response yesterday to the DHBs' claim that its push for safe staffing was a scare campaign designed to leverage public support.
The DHBs also claimed that mediation broke down because the union was unwilling to budge on its position.
In a statement, NZRDA national secretary Deborah Powell said that to accept the DHBs' offer, doctors would have to give up on a pay rise to achieve safer work hours.
The union was unhappy with the stance adopted by the country's 20 DHBs.
''NZRDA is deeply concerned the DHBs are becoming increasingly aggressive towards the doctors as we try to implement change,'' Dr Powell said.
''Over the nine months of bargaining, NZRDA has repeatedly asked the employers to provide even a single alternative rostering pattern to what we have suggested but the DHBs have come up with nothing.
''NZRDA's position has always been that if some other pattern that works is agreed, all well and good, but in the absence of something else, the rostering patterns we have successfully trialled and implemented in some areas of New Zealand, will be used,'' Dr Powell said.
Unsafe work rosters were causing clinical errors and putting patients at risk, she said.
''It is unconscionable in our view to not have a definitive resolution to this situation.''
