New consultant work practices

dissed doc

Thunder63 wrote: »

The consultants did take a pay cut a few years ago if I remember correctly. Another one would be too large of a cut.

I don't think it's fair to say 40 hours for 116k is acceptable in some specialities when others are getting 180k for the same roster.

I'm currently working in Australia and was planning on returning but to take a 80k dollar pay cut is just not viable now.

Is the opening 116-120k a starter rate that increases yearly? Will they ever reach the levels of other consultants? Is this their way of bringing in the junior consultant grade or is it 116k for life??

There are a few aspects to this.

1. The HSE's primary task is to reduce future salary and pension obligations
- reduced salaries now. They only affect future new employees.
- reduced pensions way into the future when the complete lack of pension funds become apparent: no more lump sum/2/3rds salary and so on.

2. The second purpose of the HSE is to reduce over public healthservice committments;
- such a salary will attract some people to counties with a low cost of living and the e.g., one remaining hospital in the region
- areas like Cork, Dublin and Galway are big enough to support private services. Specialists will be more likely to go for private work in the cities, with higher cost of living

3. Those that were think about leaving but on the fence, will now more likely leave, BUT on the opposite side, people that wanted to stay anyway will be stay *anyway*; having spoke to people a few years ago when this was just talk (around 2008-2009) it was clear that many are simply accepting of it; they don't want private practice, are happy living in e.g., Kilkenny, and the salary is pretty good in places like that. These people would stay if the salary was 80k.
- only a small group of consultants actually make significant income from private work.

4. Salary increments:
- there is nothing discussed regarding increments or clinical awards
- it is more likely that the only extras on the base salary will be a notional extra for providing that on-call cover; e.g., €5-10k/yr for being 1 in 3 on call for example.


Concerns that I have:
- they have also withdrawn the €3000/yr training allowance to do Continous Professional Development. It wasn't much to begin with, but how are people supposed to get the legally required CPD points? Spend your own money on non tax-deductible continuous training that your employer is supposed to do.
- a faster push towards closing and amalgamating rural hospitals
- no word on what exactly would happen if these new consultants actually only did their required work week and then went home. There are at the moment around 1/2 the specialists employed for the population and a lot provide 7 days a week cover and weekend work simply because.

Anthony16

Unfortunately ,i do believe the current consultants have looked out for themselves on this one. Their pay cant and wont be touched due to the croke park agreement.While many here view the cuts to future consultants as unjust,cutting home help to the elderly/disabled is more unjust. More public service pay cuts must come.We have a 15 billion sovereign debt per year currently.

iratira

Concerns that I have:
- they have also withdrawn the €3000/yr training allowance to do Continous Professional Development. It wasn't much to begin with, but how are people supposed to get the legally required CPD points? Spend your own money on non tax-deductible continuous training that your employer is supposed to do.
- a faster push towards closing and amalgamating rural hospitals
- no word on what exactly would happen if these new consultants actually only did their required work week and then went home. There are at the moment around 1/2 the specialists employed for the population and a lot provide 7 days a week cover and weekend work simply because.[/Quote]

And what about non scheme nchds who are netting 500-600 per week.
They NEVER had a cpd kitty. It came out of their net salaries as do exam costs (circa 1,200 for each exam) and with such low pass rates ( the establishment wants to maintain its exclusivity and squeeze money out of those who have no choice).
So boo hoo about the consultants cpd money.
Most consultants just looked quizzically at you if you pointed out you couldn't afford something or if you tried explaining the burden of cpd and exam costs.
They don't understand the circumstances of an nchd at all.