South Australia doctors attend stop-work meeting over pay negotiations

ABC NEWS (Australia)

South Australian doctors will walk off the job in July if a pay agreement can't be reached with the state government. The union members have unanimously rejected the current offer but say they want to continue negotiating.

Transcript

00:00There was a one-hour stop work meeting this morning where over 500 members voted unanimously

00:07against the current offer.

00:09The government has put a minimum 10 per cent pay rise over three years on the table as

00:13well as a $4,000 boost for junior doctors.

00:17The union, however, is pushing for 30 per cent over three years.

00:22The union says that it's ready to launch into intense negotiations and says there'll be

00:27a full day strike action on July 30 if an outcome isn't reached before then.

00:33However before then though there'll be a number of stop work meetings on the week of July 21st

00:37where the union will be visiting local health networks across the state.

00:41The union says there's a lot of pressure on doctors currently and here's what they had

00:45to say.

00:46They need to stop the pressure on our doctors so that they can actually concentrate on what's

00:51important and that is the patients.

00:53We are not seeing that and we haven't seen that for at least the last nine months.

00:59We all know the difficulties that frontline health clinicians face.

01:03We need to value and respect that commitment they give to the public.

01:06The state's industrial relations minister, Kaya Marr, says the government is open to negotiating.

01:13He says that the current offer on the table is a fair deal and he's urging the union to

01:18ensure that any strike action doesn't impact patient safety.

01:21All South Australians really appreciate the work that doctors do in keeping us all safe.

01:27But I think you risk losing support if you're doing prolonged strikes that could have any

01:33impact on patients and their health and I'd call on the union leadership of doctors to

01:39absolutely guarantee that any action that they take will not have health impacts on South

01:44Australians.

01:45It's not clear yet when the government and the union will be meeting but this is a situation

01:49that we'll be keeping across ahead of those dates in July.

Category

Transcript

Recommended