Junior Doctor's Strike...

This is ridiculous. I normally support the workers, but the figures are there for most people to see.

Depending on who you believe, the average starting salary is either 70k or 88k after six years of university. Now, let's compare this...

an LLB takes 4 years. After 2 years of workforce experience, what % of lawyers would be earning, say, 70k? Almost none.

PhDs - 8 years or so. A starting lecturer earns much less than a junior doctor despite the fact that their qualifications are actually much more significant.

A scientist - this is where it REALLY pisses me off - those student who go into science and end up working for research institutes won't even sniff 70k let alone 88k for a long time, despite the fact their work is incredibly important.

Junior doctors already have a package that when measured against time to qualify and hours/week is already rather generous. Methinks the girl doth complain too much.

Deborah Powell is incredibly confrontational. The dynamics of negotiating means someone like her makes a fantastic bad cop, but without the good cop who can take the other teams negotiator aside to hammer out a deal outside the room then confrontation is what will result. Also, junior doctors have had their expectations raised to high by their negotiators. Thats another mistake by Powell. You have to be realistic with your members about what is achieveable.

If I was a junior doctor, I'd be a scab in this situation.

And I fucking hate scabs, but less so than plain greedy bastards

I know a girl, around 4-5 years out of med school, who has the opportunity to be working for a consultancy earning $1 mill plus in Sydney.

freaking greedy little shits.

and before anybody says that you need to pay more to attract smart people i'd just like to say that I know doctors of the PhD kind that are far smarter than the doctors I know of the medical kind. If the PhDs can do it for comparatively minimal pay, then so can the medical doctors.

Funny thing is they haven't actually justified WHY they deserve more - they're almost as thick as the AUSA whining about entry standards at university (memo to AUSA: the purpose of a university is academic excellence whether they be 95% chinese or whatever)

They say it's because of their qualifications - well we proved that wrong.
They say it's because of their workload - uhhh? Policemen? The NZDF soldiers working 18hr days in Afghanistan?

Doctors have forgotten that they are medical people because they should HELP PEOPLE. Not so they can earn a few extra $.

Greed = the norm these days it seems, regardless of your vocation

Let's face it, the majority of the smartest of the smart do usually end up at med school (straight out of high school anyway).

They do work pretty shit hours from time to time.

They have an extremely high level of responsibility (more so than a PhD, soldiers could be on a par as in both situations they can be responsible for the lives of others).

They seem to have some pretty shit bureaucracy. Friend had to pay around $2k just to apply for Orthopaedics. He had been told he had been eligible based on his experience so far, found out after he had forked out his $2k that others were 'more' eligible and that he wasn't going to be considered.

I think you'll find that most doctors are there because they enjoy helping people and because they enjoy working in a challenging and stimulating environment.

I haven't really followed the debate in the media at all, but many of the doctors I know/knew have buggered off overseas, and in some circumstances I am sure that this has been because of pay opportunities.

Now hopefully the sports med dr I saw last week knows his stuff and this cortisone shot works wonders for my leg...

So do lawyers.



This is a valid point. However, they haven't argued for this. And I would say, again, that most doctors do not deal constantly with life or death situations. Police would have as high if not more a level of responsibility.

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They seem to have some pretty shit bureaucracy. Friend had to pay around $2k just to apply for Orthopaedics. He had been told he had been eligible based on his experience so far, found out after he had forked out his $2k that others were 'more' eligible and that he wasn't going to be considered.
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Same everywhere. Scientists have to live hand to mouth and compete for their own living wages.



Exactly. All they think of is their OWN pay. Rather than helping others. It fucks me off.

PS your point about the smartest of the smart is I think wrong.

The smartest person I ever met was doing Pols. The second was doing Philosophy. I think more smart people go into Law nowadays than go into Medicine.

BTW I think junior doctors do have a shit job. But so do the people cleaning toilets. And nobody gives a shit about them.

Yes lawyers can pull shit hours but it is not always a constant and consistent thing, whereas junior doctors seem to get shit hours fairly consistently.

I'd say law school, med school and engineering attract different types of smarts. On the whole I'd say med attracts a much higher standard. I knew a few people doing law who got 400+ in bursary, but just about everyone doing med was 400+ aside from MAPAS (maori and pac islanders) maybe.

Was a girl at o rorke hall who got 3rd in NZ bursary, but she did engineering.

It is just plain wrong that junior doctors earn $88k straight outta med school. This is what Cunliffe said in parliament, under parliamentry priviledge, and has therefore gone on to be quoted all around the place, but is wrong. Average starting wage about $68k, which I am on, being a fresh grad.

They say you get 6 weeks of leave, however you can hardly ever take it because there is no cover because of the shortage of house officers.

Hours are shit, but then again, so are many other things. The argument is really about retention of staff, the disparity between what locums (temp doctors - paid around $100/hr) are paid vs permanent staff, and working conditions. This message has been lost in mainstream media reporting, unfortunately, and it makes us look like 'money grubbing little shits', i agree.

Essentially the DHBs have said they will give us 4% per year for 3 years, however they will not continue with our current work conditions i.e. we could go back to working 60 hours straight like it used to be before the current union started campaignin for better conditions. Although I think 10% per year for 3 years is way too high however...

I'm sure there's a fuckup somewhere in the pay scale system. I'm a civil engineer and I could argue that in countries like Germany and France I'd be treated like a God - and paid as such, but then again a profession's average salary is often related to the way that profession is percieved by that society. In NZ we hold medical doctors in higher regard than people who get PhDs in other fields.

It's all very good to say that if you have a PhD, then you're smarter and therefore should be earning more. But if you get a PhD and spend the rest of your days regurgitating what you learnt to students at Uni, then you are not percieved as important by the general public as becoming a medical doctor and helping out with a doctor shortage crisis that the public are all too familiar with because it's in the papers every 2 months.

Vadinho - just like you argue that doctors don't deal with life or death everyday, I think you'll find that police officers don't deal with life or death every day either.

Yip, that's exactly what academics do: regurgitate stuff to students.

LOLOLOLOL :>

ok, maybe that was harsh........they also get involved in lengthy online debates to show off they intellectual prowess

sucks to be one of the many intelligent (?? well maybe not me), educated people in an country which is all about shit pay, virtually no unions or any collective bargaining power etc....

you know like the majority

Go the doctors I guess

I wonder if anyone here can guess how much (little) many law grads earn in the first year of their working career?

38K

boo hoo poor fucking lawyers

jeeze we need some other professionals in this forum

perhaps some teachers for some balance of the income brackets

yeah but it's common knowledge that lawyer's salaries take some pretty big leaps during the first few years after graduation......so you're hardly at the bottom of the heap.

I'm on less than that. I have 3 degrees, 2 diplomas - one postgraduate, one graduate. Four articles published. Only 4 weeks leave.

Yeah - you guys have it real tough.

BTW Cunliffe said the average wage for junior doctors was 88k.

What needs to happen is that the DHBs instead of paying more need to hire enough doctors so that the hours of work drop to 40/week for all doctors.

Nobody should ever have to work more than 40 a week. It's unjust. And I do support the doctors ENTIRELY when it comes to the working condition aspects of the job.

Teachers with 4 years of uni start on 43k. Higher than a lawyer would. After 5 years, yes, there would be divergence.

I have seen law clerks start on $24-27 k at certain firms

not all legal work is necessarily well-paid

sometimes the drive for pay-increases is misguided eg when it involves a lot more stress/work and also puts you into a higher tax bracket

try 10k less for some lawyers...was pretty common for grads to be paid 26-29k when I graduated. This was for non big firm jobs.

virgo..not all lawyers take 'big' leaps in salary in the first few years after graduation, yes in big firms you can get big leaps, but law isn't necessarily that well paying when you consider professionals in other areas.

I am now earning roughly double what I started on, and have 4.5 years or so experience (I understand in big firms you can double up in around 2 years or so)...if I stay in the game, hopefully I can double that again over the next 5 years (might be pushing it in seeking that though). So would be well paid at the end of that - but it would have taken me 10 or so years.

I flat with 2 first year teachers and they earn around about what I earnt 2 years ago - albeit as inhouse counsel in a government job (with 2.5 years experience, 5 years study - I did a ba as well, and however long professionals took)...

if you want to complain about overpaid professionals take a look at IT!

Regulating hours to 40/week can be pretty difficult when you deal with urgent issues involving others safety (or even just urgent issues) or when you have to be in court all day unexpectantly, when you expected to have the afternoon to prepare cross examination for a hearing the next day, with a full day hearing the next day, the subject of which is very dear to your clients heart. These are just a few examples which can make it difficult for me to stick to a '40' hour week.

I guess I could always say to my boss - I'm going home, I've done my 40 hours for the week, but am not sure if he'd let me go home after 3 days work for the week if it was a really busy week- and I am sure some people work harder than that.

That's a management issue. Not a worker issue. You feel guilty when you shouldn't.

Design your workstreams so you can cope. A little bit of organisation goes a long way. Build in extra capacity so that you can handle the surges when necessary. It's called redundancy. If people have to do urgent issues, you don't task them with routine work as well. You have a duty roster.

8hrs a day for sleep, 8 hrs a day for work, and 8 hrs a day for a man's leisure = the way.

if only vad...i am constantly rescheduling entire days based on urgent work. today i got a phone call at 11am, client's ex had taken off with their baby, met with him at 12, applications, affidavits filed at 2...decision from judge at 4.30. had client meetings all morning pretty much, and another meeting after lunch -all 3 of those meetings (not including urgent work) had to happen today for various reasons - urgency of various situations.

and you do learn to become really organised. you have to be when dealing with the admin nightmare which is legal aid!

So you should have another lawyer on "standby" - a sort of Quick Reaction Force - allowing others to concentrate on routine tasks.

Do you think the Police STG does routine stuff while on alert? Nope. they sit in a ready room. waiting.

unfortunately I don't! I am the go to person in my firm for the kind of work I deal with!...am resisting the palming off of other work to me from one of the junior lawyers (she has palmed things off to me before).

and unfortunately the area I work in is full of 'crises'

anyway..back to the junior doctors.

also it is not an efficient use of resources to have lawyers on standby!...you just need to reschedule for urgent work. and then clear your diary to catch up with the backlog.

You are missing the point. Junior doctors are leaving this country in droves. It doesn't matter what lawyers get paid or what engineers get paid or what nurses get paid or who was smarter and who got a higher bloody bursary result! It's not a pissing contest. Let's bury our egos a bit and recognise the situation - if you want Nana to be looked after by an NZ trained graduate who speaks English and has an understanding and commitment to the NZ health system, then you have to pay - simple. 21st Century. Free market. Reality.

Any job is paid more overseas - I can’t see how paying more at home will ever stop this attrition.

I made what was basically a complete career change, started again at graduate level in London, and still started on almost double what I was getting after my 3 years experience back home! (ok so it’s still engineering - but a completely unrelated field)

I mean even an unskilled labourer is going to totally clean up here - comparatively more so than most professionals. The only reason they aren’t also leaving in droves is that they can only get a 1 year working visa, whereas doctors and other professionals are welcomed in as ‘skilled migrants’ to stay for how ever long they want.

matt mccarten on the subject in sunday herald today

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/466/story.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10507785

I love that in my industry no one ever complains about how little they get paid.

Of course for people at the big investment banks its not exactly the most secure income at times like this.

if they've been pocketing millions of dollars in bonuses I'm sure they have enough fat to fall back on

Like professional sportsmen who complain that they won't have a career after 30 despite earning 8x the average wage from age 20 (thus 80 years of earnings to fall back on)

One thing to realise about the dynamics of this dispute. The Resident Doctors Association isn't a trade union in the sense, say, the Service Food Workers Union is a union with elected delegates and full Union bargaining agents negotiating with the employer or the employers advocate.

The RDA instead sub-contracts its wage negotiations to a private sector company, of whom Deborah Powell is an employee. She is therefore the negotiator for the RDA but is employed by a professional advocacy organisation. This is as far I know a unique situation and one to my mind one that has obvious conflicts of interest for Deborah Powell. Firstly, It seems to me that her & her employer are at least open to the charge they are deliberately continuing the dispute because they are either going to get a big commission on success or they are creaming it in fees. Secondly, Deborah Powell may have a whole set of business goals that are antithical to striking a deal in the interests of the wider good of the health service. In other words, private companies will pursue narrow private goals at the direction of their clients. By contrast, a trade union is a political organisation and direction and policy are subordinate to the democratically elected union officials and are often open to wider issues of public good - not always, but often enough.

Having a non-accountable advocate seconded from a private company as your primary bargaining agent for a major public sector pay dispute is extraordinary.

After seeing the news tonight...

It seems that what the junior doctors are really complaining about is salary exploitation, which is not peculiar to the medical sector.

Any decent and attractive salary, when divided by onerous and excessive weekly working hours, becomes an unattractive hourly rate.

150,000 / 80hrs = 75,000 40hrs ???

young doctors are on $75,000 right?

divide that by 80 hours a week (approx) and you basically get the $23 hourly rate (before tax) that the young doctor guy quoted on the news

:>

Fewer hours - I've always agreed with that!

I'm with Vads, work your 40hrs and the DHB can eat a dick if they want more (within reason)

NB: I average 45-50hrs a week. But generally that's off my own bat rather than being forced to

ok me too! we are all agreed then

can i get in on this circle jerk cos i agree too?

sure

it is the patients who will be eating dirt, not the DHB who will be eating dick.

i can only imagine the government will have more to say to the DHBs about their lack of foresight/adequate management than they will have to say to the doctors working a full working week and having some proper downtime

So the jnr doctors should insane hours to cover for the piss poor management from the DHB?

No.

I agree that having the jnr doctors on reasonable hour now would impact the patients, but ultimately who is resbonsible for the quality of the patient care available?

Surely that must be the DHB?

IMO having these people work ~80+ hour weeks is neither ethical nor safe, doing that people get tired, burn out and make mistakes....

a friend working in aussie has just qualified as an anaesthetist. starts on 600k!!!!!!!