Mediation beginning tomorrow may avert a planned strike by resident medical officers which threatens to disrupt hospitals across New Zealand.
The strike was scheduled for January 15 and 16. The Southern District Health Board is still planning for the potential stopwork, but other DHBs have said surgery will be disrupted if it goes ahead.
The talks are scheduled for tomorrow and Thursday.
The contract expired in February last year, but negotiations did not begin in earnest until September.
The RMO’s union, the Resident Doctors Association, staged a safe staffing campaign two years ago, which resulted in the introduction of new rosters.
"When they (DHBs) did table their claims, they sought numerous clawbacks to resident doctors’ terms and conditions of employment," RDA president Courtney Brown said.
The union, which represents 330 doctors, said settlement of the dispute was unlikely unless those provisions were removed from the employer’s statement of claim.
