Hospital pay holdouts risk 'punishment'
The 89 public hospital staff who are refusing a 5 per cent pay cut may be denied future annual pay rises and offered new contracts with lower pay after their current contracts expire.
These are among recommendations for dealing with the holdouts that will be discussed by the Hospital Authority's board on Thursday.
According to a paper setting out the recommendations, action is needed to 'ensure fairness' to the vast majority of staff who have accepted the pay reduction - imposed in line with a similar cut for senior civil servants.
But the Public Doctors' Association yesterday objected strongly to any suggestion staff who refuse the pay cut will be 'punished'. It said that, while the authority was following the civil service cut, it had not given its staff pay and benefits comparable to the civil service.
From January 1, the authority cut the pay of senior staff making more than HK$48,000 a month by 5.38 per cent. According to the board paper to be discussed on Thursday, more than 98 per cent of the 7,233 affected staff had consented to the pay cut but 89 had refused.
The non-consenting staff are 64 doctors, 18 nurses, three allied health workers and four senior management members or others.
The paper proposes that these staff be ineligible for annual pay rises for at least five years or until the authority decides otherwise and that they miss the next annual pay increment.
Those on contract would be offered renewal terms that 'reflect the lack of equity with those who consented', the discussion paper proposes.
'Whether any future pay or benefit enhancements to employee remuneration packages will apply to the [non-consenting] staff will be a matter for further consideration and consultation,' the paper says.
The authority acknowledged that the proposals would be subject to challenge.
For example, barring staff from an annual increment - which is performance-based - can only be done as an administrative measure to all non-consenting staff across the board.
'If a [non-consenting member of] staff's performance is assessed to be satisfactory and the reviewing manager recommends the granting of an increment, it is difficult to see how the Hospital Authority can bar that,' the discussion paper says.
The authority says it will write to individual non-consenting staff about the consequences of refusing the cut.
The pay-cut issue triggered a bitter row after the authority said that any doctor who refused to accept the cut would be sacked. Sixteen doctors quit in protest and the row was only settled when authority chief executive Shane Solomon apologised for the threat.
Dr Ho Pak-leung, president of the Public Doctors' Association, warned yesterday that any unilateral action taken by the authority to change staff pay rules would be unlawful, according to legal advice the association had sought.
'Barring staff from having annual increments or pay [rises] is unfair, because this kind of disciplinary action should not be imposed on staff unless they commit mistakes,' Ho said.
He said that among the 89 staff refusing to accept the pay cut, 12 were consultants who would retire this year. Others had already quit or would quit soon.
'But there are some doctors who refuse the pay cut in a protest at unfair human resources policies. The authority should fix such structural problems to answer staff grievances,' he said.
The association complains that the authority has failed to provide staff with pay and benefits comparable to those of civil servants, in breach of a promise to do so.
