8 May 2008
Dear Trainee Intern
In the past, NZRDA was able to protect Trainee Interns graduating from medical school and commencing their employment as House Officers, through our MECA (Multi-Employer Collective Agreement).
The MECA is negotiated by NZRDA for members. All new employees such as Trainee Interns were automatically employed under that agreement for the first 30 days. This gave time to decide whether to join NZRDA and continue under the MECA, or not to join and negotiate an individual employment agreement. The vast majority of TIs have become members of NZRDA and continued to enjoy the protection of the MECA and other services provided by the Resident Doctors Association.
This year may be different. At the time of writing, NZRDA has been unable to negotiate the renewal of our MECA. On June 30, 2008 it will expire and cease to be in force.
This potentially places all Trainee Interns in a vulnerable position as you look towards your first job with a DHB in New Zealand. NZRDA has a strong philosophy to protect not only our current members, but those who come after us. Resident Doctors have fought hard over the years to improve our conditions of employment, including limiting our hours of work (in 1985), retaining the meals provision, study leave and reimbursement of costs of training.
Clearly NZRDA will continue to strive to get MECA settled, however since the ACE process is about to begin, we felt it was important to write to you now and outline some important issues and ways to protect yourselves.
Most importantly, when you are made an offer of employment you have the right to know what conditions of employment are being proposed. Will you be offered the same conditions as the expired MECA or something else? You are unable to make an informed choice about which employer you wish to work for without this information. To give you an example: you wish to have a “no registrar available” experience and are therefore looking to employment at Tairawhiti or Blenheim. For example, what if these three hospitals were offering 10% less salary than Rotorua or Taranaki? Would you prefer more money and a few registrars around to less money and no registrars?
We would suggest that you need to find out what conditions of employment each DHB is offering BEFORE ranking those you wish to work for. An easy way to do this would be to simply ask the DHBs to confirm in writing that “you will receive no lesser terms and conditions of employment than contained in the recently expired NZRDA MECA (dated 1/1/07 – 30/6/07).”
If you don’t have this information before you rank them, a DHB could table an inferior offer and you would be left trying to negotiate a better deal after the event. From a DHB perspective not telling you until after you have been ranked is potentially advantageous for them – and extremely disadvantageous for you.
NZRDA will soon publish our review of hospitals on the website www.nzrda.org.nz .for your information. This publication is a frank and subjective RMO view of what their hospital is like to work for. Many TIs have found it very useful in making their ranking decisions.
Finally if you wish to ensure you receive ongoing communications from us on this and other news, you can become an associate member of NZRDA for $10. We would recommend you do join us as it will enable us to directly assist you through this process. Please email us at membership@nzrda.org.nz if you need more information.
Kind regards
