An arbitration team recommended Wednesday that doctors be given a 23.5 percent pay raise. The proposal was celebrated by the Doctors' Union, whose officials said, “This is a particularly happy day for the medical profession, whose workers have not received a significant raise since the year 2000.”
The pay raise would be given to all kinds of doctors working in the public health sector. Three types of medical professionals—anesthesiologists, doctors working in intensive care, and doctors specializing in care for prematurely born infants—should receive a higher pay raise, arbitrators said.
Doctors' salaries
Those professionals should get a 31.8 percent raise, they said, due to the acute staffing shortage in those fields. Only doctors working exclusively in a field facing an acute manpower shortage will receive the higher pay hike.
The pay raise would be given in five payments, beginning within two months and ending in January, 2011.
The salary currently given to Israeli doctors does not reflect the doctors' level of education, their many responsibilities, their long hours or the many expectations they are expected to fulfill, the arbitration team said. “We see this arbitration as a rare opportunity to set this situation right, while taking particular care and consideration of budgetary limitations,” they said.
Doctors pleased, skeptical
Members of the arbitration team said they had taken many factors into account when deciding on their recommendations, including the salaries given to professionals in other public sector jobs, the global financial slowdown, the doctors' willingness to give up their right to strike, and the effect doctors' salaries have on the health system and on the economy.
Doctors expressed satisfaction with the pay raise, but were skeptical that it would be sufficient to reverse the serious shortage of doctors in the Israeli health system. Some said they were disappointed that the arbitration team had not discussed other issues important to doctors, such as incentives for young doctors and doctors' demand to allow private medical care in government hospitals.
Arbitrators were called in to help solve a years-long struggle between doctors and the Finance and Health Ministries. Doctors' groups have been calling for a pay raise since the year 2000.
The Finance Ministry criticized the report Wednesday, saying, “In these days of financial crisis, we did not believe that a decision like this would be published. This is irresponsible.”
Following the arbitrators' report, the Doctors' Union and government representatives will hold intense negotiations toward a final agreement.