The government continues to refuse more than 10.5%, plus an additional 10% ‘onerous duties allowance’. The whole workplace remains onerous, however.
A resolution to the ongoing wage dispute between staff specialist psychiatrists and NSW Health remains out of reach, while the government attempts to “pause” the processing of resignations.
In a doorstop today, NSW Minister for Mental Health Rose Jackson said the 25% wage increase for staff specialist psychiatrists, proposed by the Australian Salaried Medical Officers’ Federation, remained a proposition that the government was unable to agree to.
The current proposition from the government, which has not been accepted, remains a 10.5% wage increase over the next three years.
Ms Jackson announced an additional 10% “onerous duties allowance”, that would be immediately accessible to psychiatrists.
Both parties will be up before the Industrial Relations Commission of NSW tomorrow at 10.30am.
“We’re asking psychiatrists not to resign and putting forward what we think is a reasonable offer,” Ms Jackson told the media today.
“[We’re] accepting that it hasn’t been agreed to by [psychiatrists] and saying we want that question urgently answered by the Industrial Relations Commission, [while] giving a commitment that [the government will accept] the finding of that independent umpire.
“I think it is a very reasonable path forward that is clear, transparent, will provide certainty to all parties, and I think the people can accept that that is a sensible way to resolve these issues.”
NSW Health Secretary Susan Pearce said the government had reached out to psychiatrists last week to confirm the date of their resignations, in an effort to pause the processing of said resignations, which would be “staggered”.
“It’s not all about 22 January,” she said.
“We appreciate that is a significant date.
“What we’ve done in the last 24 hours is to say to [LHDs], unless somebody has confirmed to you that they are absolutely going [to resign] on Wednesday, or whatever date they’ve given, please just pause to give us an opportunity to continue to work through this issue.
“Obviously, the last thing we would want is some administrative nightmare of processing the resignation only to then have the issue resolved.”
Ms Pearce declined to provide a figure for the number of psychiatrists that had confirmed their resignation but said “we have had some people who have indicated that they’d like to postpone their resignation date … in some cases by weeks and months”.
“I’m not being cagey about [this], I don’t want to give a number that is incorrect, because at the moment … now that we’ve put this pause on [processing resignations] … the number is not settled.”
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With regards to a contingency plan, should the mass resignation eventuate, Ms Pearce said the government was looking to have arrangements in place for the system to remain functional “in a situation where we are required to function with fewer psychiatrists”.
“We fully accept that psychiatrists are a highly specialised group of people, but there are functions that other clinical staff in our system can perform, and so it’s important that we work through that with them,” she said.
“I don’t really want to give detailed responses to that today, because that is something we’re working through with nurses, other allied health professionals and so on.”
Ms Pearce said the government had put in place “a very, very significant amount of contingency planning to deal with this situation”.
“It is not what we want to be doing, but we feel that, at this point in time, we have to do this in the best interests of our patients,” she said.
“As you know, we have a mental health emergency operations centre that commenced last Monday. It is fully staffed. It is operating from 8.30 in the morning to 10pm at night every day.
“We are engaging in building our virtual services to be able to support our mental health services across the state. It’s something that we do extensively across the system, in other parts of health care.
“No one item in this list going into is a silver bullet for this situation, it is a collection of things that we’re bringing together in the best interest of our patients.
“We’re working with our colleagues in the private sector … we’re engaging locums, as we’ve previously discussed.
“We’re working with the NSW Police, NSW Ambulance, with regard to models that we have existing in the community already, and I will say that the police are a feature of the Mental Health Emergency Operations Centre, and as are our colleagues at Department of Communities and Justice.”
Ms Pearce said the government was also engaging with the Commonwealth government, the university sector, consumer groups and NGOs as to where they may be able to assist.
“Finally, I really want to reiterate, we respect greatly our psychiatrists, we respect the fact that they can advocate for conditions. No one is disputing that.
“At the end of the day, we have a health system to run, and we need to work on that to make sure that whatever we do, we continue to care for the people who need our help.”