13.1 An employee’s hours of work and job size shall be mutually agreed and shall objectively reflect the requirements of the service and the time reasonably required for the employee to complete their agreed duties and responsibilities, as set out in their job description.
13.2 An employee’s job size is the average weekly number of hours the employee is required to undertake:
(a) routine duties and responsibilities, including such scheduled activities as out-patient clinics, theatre lists and departmental meetings;
(b) non-clinical duties and responsibilities [refer to Clause 48.2(d)];
(c) duties at locations other than the usual workplace; and
(d) rostered after hours’ on-call duties, including telephone consultations and other relevant discussions.
13.3 Payment for Rostered After Hours On-Call Duties
(a) Employees shall be paid at their ordinary hourly rate for any duties and responsibilities falling within category (a), (b) and (c) of Clause 13.2 above and at time-and-a-half their ordinary hourly rate for any duties and responsibilities falling within category (d) above.
(b) Where an applicable previous collective agreement provided higher hourly, or equivalent, rates than those specified above in this Agreement, those higher rates will continue to apply for all employees employed by that employer.
(c) In those former district health boards where higher hourly, or equivalent, rates in the previous applicable single employer collective agreements apply for current and new employees are Waitemata (double the ordinary hourly rate) and Bay of Plenty (triple hourly rate of Step 1 of Clause 12.4(a) or Step 1 in Clause 12.4(c) above, as applicable).
(d) In the event that an employee(s) is already receiving additional remuneration for rostered after-hours on-call duties from an employment agreement not covered by Sub-Clauses (b) and (c) above, it is not the intention of the parties that the employee(s) will be paid twice for these duties.
13.4 Absence of Resident Medical or Dental Officers
(a) In situations when employees are requested to undertake additional duties arising from the immediate and unexpected absence of a resident medical officer or dental officer the following arrangement shall apply. The parties acknowledge that such occasions will be rare but when they do occur the parties agree that the employee concerned shall be paid for that additional work at a premium hourly rate calculated on Step 6 as a minimum of the specialist salary scale divided by 2,086 and multiplied by 2.
(b) This clause shall only apply in circumstances where a resident medical officer is normally on duty and not in circumstances where a resident medical officer is not usually employed by the employer or where the impact of the absence of the resident medical officer is minimal and/or can be covered by another medical officer or resident medical officer.
(c) Where employees currently receive payment through job sizing to cover absences of resident medical officers then no additional payment under this clause shall be made.
Note: This clause only takes effect when the situation as described occurs.
13.5 An employer and the Association may agree upon an alternative system of remuneration combining rostered after hours call duties (Clause 13.3) and the availability allowance (Clause 14) which shall be incorporated into an agreed memorandum of understanding.
13.6 Recovery Time
Services that operate a shift system or an after-hours’ call roster are expected to have agreed arrangements in place that allow an employee to have an adequate break without deduction from full pay before commencing work following periods of on call related work or shift work where the employee is too fatigued to safely undertake their next scheduled activity.
13.7 Flexible and Predictable Work Hours
- Employees may at any time request a change in their working arrangements.
- An Employer will not unreasonably withhold its agreement to such a request.
- The employer will prioritise requests that are based on well-being concerns
For the purposes of this clause working arrangements includes (but is not restricted to) particular duties, hours of work, days of work, place of work, and the degree of flexibility or predictability of such terms.