Being my enemy is a full time job, it’s not for the faint hearted.
Senior PSA staff like to talk a big game about solidarity on Twitter.
Often they are out denouncing anyone for not showing enough solidarity for their latest pet peeve and many a time I have been attacked by senior PSA staff members for criticising public servants for spying on NZers or sadistically implementing draconian welfare policy.
Apparently I don’t show enough ‘solidarity’ so I was looking for their solidarity with the striking Jnr Doctors today…
Junior doctors say DHBs trying to destroy their union
Striking resident doctors say district health boards (DHBs) are trying to destroy their union.
The second of three 48-hour strikes planned by up to 3500 junior doctors started at 8am on Tuesday.
With a sign reading “Stop DHB’s dirty tactics” Christchurch hospital resident doctor Annabelle McGowan joined about 40 colleagues at a picket opposite Christchurch Hospital.
…I hadn’t seen anything from the PSA, so I went to their website for their latest press releases…
…wow, nothing?
…again, nothing.
The role the PSA and CTU have played in quietly supporting the creation of a scab union to undermine the Jnr Doctors has been well canvassed by Bryce Edwards and Chris Trotter, but you would have thought after such stinging criticism the PSA and CTU would acknowledge their tactics to undermine workers was wrong and lend their support.
But no?
So when one criticises public servants for illegally spying on New Zealander’s and implementing toxic social policy, that is disloyalty and not showing solidarity, yet when you actively support the creation of a scab union and ignore Jnr Drs, that’s fine and dandy?
That’s like complaining about being bulled online only to find the bully works at the agency you are complaining to.
The rarefied air for the Wellington Twitteratti and their PSA staff really is something to behold.
Yes, mystifying indeed, given how valuable the DHBs are finding the greasy Stonz outfit, as a means of undermining the Junior Doctors at the table and in public
Stonz is a classic “yellow” union not worthy of the title anymore than the Taxpayers union is
Some unionists are onto this and criticising the PSA and CTU for their cowardly support of not only a dubious union, but in effect the employers, but many others are maintaining an embarrassed silence
It is time to resolve this before the Junior Docs are inflicted with an own goal by the CTU in particular that should be supporting them
The whole medical profession needs a complete overhaul – it is the most powerful union in the country , from the strangle-hold of the medical schools to the selection and training of GPs and specialists.
7 years to rain as a common GP and several more to specialise, it is a nonsense, it is job protection gone mad, especially when GPs have become glorified pill purveyors.
We have an ageing population and year long waiting lists for cataract removal and orthopaedic procedures (with financial implications for independence and ability to return to work) Training for specific areas of surgery such as orthopaedics and ophthalmology should be 3 years max (ask any theatre nurse) without 7 years spent learning stuff you’ll never use. Money saved on years of unnecessary study would enable people to access services cheaply and fast. Surgery is essentially a trade – but the medical fraternity have turned it into an expensive luxury. The same is true for the dental trade.
Any government that can tackle the medical trade unions and make them fit for purpose will get my vote.
Please.
Be nice.
Those honourable persons who are the seniors don’t belong to common trade unions.
Associations. They have associations. Monstrously difficult to crack into, especially if you happen to be ‘foreign’. They are gatekeepers with a long tradition of keeping Others out of the ‘professions’. Only the truly awful can be removed, and only after a long lead up.
If Cuba can produce good medical people – so could we, except for that entrenched authority.
Warning: for all those inclined to start that ‘woke’ rubbish about ‘old white blokes’ – this happens where there are brown blokes, too. It’s a matter of profession and pride and status. (Some of the ladies are of like mind. No allies there.)
Exclusivity is always a corruption of some sort – and a union and an association are essentially a group of people with a common interest.
And you are correct, gender and race are immaterial when prestige and greed are involved.
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