Public hospital workers bear brunt of financial belt-tightening – ASMS

“Public hospital staff are clearly bearing the brunt of the Government’s belt-tightening in the health sector,” says Ian Powell, Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS).

“The latest information from the State Services Commission (SSC) shows that public health sector wages and salaries have fallen well below the inflation rate over the past five years.  As well, there is now a significant and growing gap between public health sector pay packets and what people are earning in the private sector.”

Mr Powell was commenting on publication of the SSC’s report, Human Resource Capability, which is available online.

In the year to June 2015, pay packets increased by 1.8% in the private sector and 1.2% in the overall public sector.  However, pay rises for people working in the public health system averaged just 0.5%. That pattern is also reflected in data for the past five years, where private sector wages and salaries increased by 10.4% on average over that period but public sector pay packets overall increased by just 7.5%, and those working in public health received even less at 6.4%.  The Consumer Price Index rose by 9.4% over the same period.

“The public health system is once again the poor cousin when it comes to paying people fairly and adequately,” says Mr Powell.

“This is very concerning given the increasingly high workloads that senior doctors and other health professionals are shouldering as hospitals are forced to do more with less.  We know our public hospitals are strapped for cash, but it’s the doctors and others who are holding the public health system together at the expense of their own health and wellbeing.”

He pointed to a recent ASMS survey on ‘presenteeism’, which showed senior doctors and dentists in New Zealand’s public hospitals are routinely going to work when they are ill:

“At the same time, we’re seeing big pay rises going to district health board chief executives and politicians, and these seem to be out of kilter with what the people on the front line of health care are receiving.”

A recent SSC report on remuneration movements for chief executives in the public sector showed that a number of district health board bosses had received large salary increases in 2014/15.  At the top of the scale, the salary band for Capital & Coast’s chief executive rose from $490,000 to $500,999 in 2013/14 to a band range of $570,000 to $579,999 in 2014/15 – an increase of about 15%, give or take 3%.

Auckland DHB’s chief executive gained about 12%, according to the SSC, although the DHB itself claims this does not take into account issues to do with the timing of ‘at risk’ payments.  The two other big winners were the chief executives at Waikato and Northland DHBs, who are reported to have gained about 11% and 10% respectively.

The average salary band increase across all DHB chief executives was 3.5% – significantly more than the 0.5% average pay rise recorded for people working in public health in the year to June 2015.  At the same time, the media reported that politicians had received pay rises ranging from 3.11% to 4.05% .

“The widening gap between public and private sector employees will no doubt already be making the public health sector a less attractive area to work in and, given the longstanding shortages in some areas of the senior medical workforce and the extra workloads many people are taking on, the Government needs to demonstrate consistency and fairness.

“The pay rises being given to chief executives and politicians simply fuel expectations that people at the sharp end of delivering health care will also receive a decent pay rise in the period ahead.”