Treasury says doctors must accept arbitration

Finance Ministry claims IMA has "gone back on" understandings from a year ago and that doctors must now agree to arbitration.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
hospital 311 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
hospital 311
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
The Finance Ministry seemed to go back to square one on the doctors’ labor dispute on Friday, saying that there was “no choice but to take it to arbitration.”
The Treasury said that the Israel Medical Association had gone back on understandings it had agreed to in the past week and some made even a year ago.
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The IMA has been adamantly against arbitration since the last wage agreement that went to it in 2000 took almost a decade until a decision was made and wages were increased.
The Treasury insisted that arbitration must begin under the supervision of the National Labor Court and be carried out intensively.
“If not, a whole year’s negotiations will go to waste.”
The 110 days of sanctions resulted in a “heavy price paid by the public and the patients,” the ministry continued.
The labor court, presided over by Judge Nili Arad, decided that on Sunday at 9 a.m. another meeting will be held in the presence of the doctors and the employers, even though the court has formally gone on summer leave.
More than 200 medical students demonstrated for a solution to the dispute at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center on Friday and to “strengthen the hands of the [medical] residents and make it possible for them to bring their struggle to an end.”
Mirsham, the association of medical residents and interns, issued a statement saying that they will honor the restraining orders issued against them by the labor court. “We will allow the IMA to invite us to the negotiation table as it should be and as expected,” Mirsham said.
The residents said that in recent days, some senior doctors and direct bosses have shown abusive behavior against the residents’ “legitimate behavior.”
These acts, they said, without giving any details, “will be handled in a serious way by the lawyer whom we have hired to represent us.”