The Cabinet is considering the military call-up of striking doctors if they fail to comply with back-to-work orders issued by the Health Ministry. A deadline of 5 p.m. local time today was, however, extended to 8 a.m. tomorrow.
Meanwhile, more than 1,000 striking doctors meeting in Tiberias today voted overwhelmingly to continue the strike regardless of any orders issued by the government.
The Ministry’s orders technically apply to about 40 percent of the 7,000 publicly employed doctors who have been on strike for three months demanding higher salaries and better working conditions. The doctors are employed by the government and by Kupat Holim, the Histadrut sick-fund. The resigned en-masse yesterday and dispersed to various parts of the country to avoid being served with back-to-work orders.
Health Minister Eliezer Shostak told reporters that the call-up of doctors, all of them members of the military reserve, was discussed by the Cabinet yesterday and will be discussed again later this week if the doctors continue to strike. Legal experts said the doctors were misled by the Medical Association into believing that their resignations relieved them of the obligation to comply with government orders.
Zvi Berenson, a former Supreme Court Justice and former head of the Labor Arbitration Appeals Board, pointed out today that the Health Ministry had issued back-to-work orders as long ago as last March 1, under the emergency regulations of the old British Mandate regime which are still in force in Israel. Those orders are valid until May 31.
DOCTORS TAKE A ‘VACATION’
The doctors themselves took off for the countryside, the beaches and lakes yesterday on a pre-arranged signal, claiming they were on “vacation. ” But according to legal sources, back-to-work orders broadcast by the media are no less valid than written orders handed to the doctors in person. Failure to comply would subject the doctors to criminal proceedings. The maximum penalty is two years imprisonment and a 250,000 Shekel (about $6,000) fine.
HOSPITALS IN CRITICAL CONDITION
There has been considerable public sympathy for the striking doctors up to now. They have been staffing government hospitals and sick-fund clinics on a reduced schedule and have been treating patients privately for a fee. But their mass departure created a crisis in the nation’s hospitals. The hospitals were reported in “critical condition ” today with only 10 percent of their normal medical staff on duty.
The latter are mainly department heads and senior consultants who will have been on unrelieved duty for 40 hours by the 5 p.m. deadline. They complained today that they were literally “falling off their feet” with exhaustion and warned that their ability to make medical decisions was impaired. The strike committee has made no arrangements to replace them.
According to a media count at 20 government and Kupat Holim hospitals today, only 347 physicians were on duty out of a normal complement of 3,579. Dr. Dan Michaeli,head of the Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, said the institution might “stagger through ” another 24 or 36 hours but after that, the situation would be “impossible.”
Between 20-30 operations are performed at Ichilov every morning. As of noon yesterday, only one patient underwent surgery. Another patient scheduled for open heart surgery was told he would have to wait a few days. Similar reports were received from other hospitals. Army hospitals are fully staffed however. Dr. Ram Ishai, president of the Medical Association, told Israel Radio yesterday: “We do not want to harm our patients, only our employers who have not listened to our requests and demands for the past 18 months.”
EFFORTS TO REACH A COMPROMISE
Meanwhile, government officials and Medical Association representatives have been locked in round-the-clock negotiations to try to reach a compromise that will end the strike.
Some Cabinet ministers have suggested that the Knesset Finance Committee take over the mediating role from Finance Minister Yoram Aridor who has vowed not to accede to the doctors’ demands. The Medical Association intimated it might agree, but Aridor said he would resign if the negotiations are taken out of his hands. That would precipitate a Cabinet crisis.
Aridor and Shostak exchanged angry words at yesterday’s Cabinet session. The Finance Minister produced the salary record of a senior physician who enjoys a very high income to demonstrate that doctors are not underpaid. But Shostak told Aridor to “stop bluffing.”
He noted that the salary in question was compensation for 400 hours of work a month, far from the normal compensation for doctors who work an eight-hour day. Aridor charged that Shostak and his Ministry were only prolonging the strike by supporting the doctors’ demands.
Those demands include enlarged base salaries to cover overtime which has become in practice “normal extra hours” without extra compensation. The base salary, which is less than the countrywide average, is the basis on which pensions are calculated for government-employed doctors who retire after many years in responsible positions.
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