For planned absences:

When there are planned absences your employer must ensure there is a backfill employee appointed from the first day of the leave.

A backfill employee must be paid at the same classification grade and time fraction of the role being backfilled. If an employer is unable to backfill a someone on leave because a suitably experienced and qualified employee is unavailable the employer must not ask another employee/s to perform the work of the absent employee unless his/her work is reduced by a commensurate amount.(seem detailed explanation below).

For unplanned absences:

If there are unplanned absences (for two weeks or more), ie those occasions where someone is sick, is on Workcover or a position has become vacant as a result of a resignation or termination, your employer is required to backfill the position for the duration of the absence.

If you’re rostered on-call you can’t be recalled unless your employer has been advised of the absence after 4pm the day before the absence or if another replacement employee is unavailable.

What happens if any absence isn’t backfilled?

If there are absences and they haven’t been filled then your boss will immediately prioritise work to ensure:

1. workloads for other staff members who may be asked to perform the duties of the absent employee are adjusted by reducing their usual duties; or
2. the work of the absent employee is not required to be undertaken by any employee;
3. other staff will not unreasonably be required to work overtime to complete their own work and the work of the absent staff member.
4. if overtime is worked then overtime pay will apply

Your boss is also required to employ adequate relief staff to ensure that work is not falling to you and your colleagues.

Enforcing your right:

It is necessary for your employer to exhaust all avenues to backfill planned and unplanned absences before making other staff fill in for such absences.

If you are aware of a position which has not been backfilled then let the Union know using our handy “Leave Replacement / Backfilling” form.

Need more information? Contact the Union on 9623 9623 or at enquiry@msav.org.au

With inequality at 70 year highs, wage growth the lowest on record and 40% of people now in insecure work, our union, together with the ACTU and Australia’s other unions have launched a campaign to change the rules for working people.

Help us take a big step forward in this campaign by completing a 5-minute survey about what’s happening to working people and what we need to do about it.

This survey will allow you to tell us about your priorities and it will give you a voice as we work to swing the pendulum back towards working people. To have your say complete the survey using this link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/XCWP956

No answers to the survey that would identify you will be used or shared. The survey is open and will close on 9 February 2018.

As we build the campaign we will keep adding more content, resources and ways you can get involved.

But what happens to the delivery of pathology in public hospitals when private pathology providers cut staff and services; or worse, go out of business?

We’ve regularly pointed out the real dangers in allowing private providers to deliver key clinical services, like pathology, in our public hospitals. It’s becoming more obvious that private providers are not more effective or efficient than in-house pathology services and are contributing to problems in delivering world-class healthcare; on the contrary. It is a major problem when turn-around times increase because pathology labs in public hospitals are closed and the work moved to locations based hundreds of kilometres away. Regardless of the strenuous defence of these moves by a hospital’s management, the research overwhelmingly shows that doing tests closer to where the sample is taken significantly improves turn-around times, reduces chances for spoiled samples and speeds up the time for a patient to receive treatment.

Increasing turn-around times for test results can have adverse outcomes for patients as test results need to be known before treatment(s) can start. Or it can result in patients taking up beds to only be told that there is nothing to worry about.

It also has flow on impacts in local regional and rural communities by increasing unemployment and reducing confidence in local health services. There are usually significant amounts of experience lost when private pathology services take over in-house testing. And there are unexpected consequences for other healthcare services like aged care, which rely on local pathology services in order to deliver care and ensure the health and well-being of mature aged people.

The reality of private pathology providers shutting laboratories was sheeted home in 2017 with Clinical Labs abruptly announcing the closure of two health service pathology laboratories.

With the privatisation of essential clinical pathology services in public hospitals, there is a need to ask: what happens to the quality of care in our public hospitals when a private pathology provider goes out of business or decides to walk away from a contract?

Judging by the Victorian Government’s apparent approval of the continued use of privatised pathology services, despite the concerns raised, public hospitals would be left without adequate in-house pathology services to ensure the safe treatment of patients.

Too often patients are being put at risk by the business practices and profit imperatives of private pathology providers. When samples are misplaced or go missing, and there are increasing delays in test results being made available, the government cannot idly sit by and allow public hospitals to outsource vital clinical pathology services.

The business model for all private pathology providers is to close down hospital pathology laboratories, sack scientists and move pathology testing to laboratories hundreds of kilometres away. Ongoing cuts to the scientific workforce means private pathology providers are unable to provide quality pathology services to the highest possible standards. It is anathema to the provision of high quality public health services to have private pathology providers cutting the very workforce which delivers quality results for treating clinicians and patients who rely on these.

The Victorian Government must stop allowing public hospitals from outsourcing vital clinical services like pathology if they want to deliver world-class healthcare to all Victorians.

This year we will work hard to bed down our new Public Sector agreement and start putting into action the important new provisions that we secured together. (We’re still celebrating the outstanding result of the agreement ballot.) In particular we want to ensure that the provisions around backfilling leave are fully utilised and tested. These provisions were included because of our work in identifying the growing pressure on staff to do more work and work longer hours, often without pay.

The Union will continue bargaining with the Community Sector and private providers, and we remain hopeful that employers will bargain in good faith. And we will continue advocating for better outcomes for Victoria’s health care sector by challenging the ongoing notion that better results are delivered by outsourcing vital clinical services.

But we know there are still some big issues that remain. We’re regularly dealing with emboldened managers and supervisors who think the rules don’t apply to them as they make resolving disputes more complicated than they need to be. We’re also seeing an increase in interference from employers demanding staff see their healthcare professionals claiming they only want to help, which in reality will be used to discipline staff, put people under pressure leading to people being sacked. It’s clear the rules are broken and it’s vital we change the rules. That’s why the Union will be working with other Unions across Australia and the Australian Council of Trade Unions to keep up the campaign to Change the Rules.

As we kick off 2018 the Union will work with you to increase our membership. With the great outcome from the public sector agreement, now is the time to ask your colleagues who aren’t a member to join up. And if you have anyone new starting, it’s the best time to ask them to join up.

And the Union will continue its “No Pay? No Way!” campaign. This campaign has given the Union vital information about the impacts of unpaid work and the variety of reasons that it continues to happen. It has also been instrumental in guiding the Union on its lobbying and advocacy work with the State Government, as well as developing things like our log of claims for the most recent public sector bargaining efforts. It has become an important part of the Union’s ongoing work helping us identify trends within our sector. In this year’s “No Pay? No Way!” survey we will be including questions around the impact of unpaid work on your personal life and health and well-being.

2018 promises to be a big year for the Union and we look forward to working with you all in continuing the fight for our rights at work and changing the rules for working people.

Paul Elliott
Secretary

And despite the short time frame to lodge your vote we actually increased the number of people voting in the ballot.

As we highlighted when it first came to light there was a technical problem in the Fair Work Commission with final approval for the agreement, we have been able to secure support to have our new agreement finalised by late December. The VHIA today made an urgent application to the FWC to approve the agreement as soon as possible. .

This terrific outcome is a result of the work the Union did to make sure members were informed about when voting started and how they could lodge their vote. It’s also a testament to you, our members who encouraged your colleagues to vote YES and shared vital information to ensure such an overwhelming result.

Now that we’ve been able to secure such a strong YES vote it’s vital that we continue to grow our membership. Please ask your colleagues to join so that our collective voice is stronger and so they can benefit from everything the Union has to offer like protecting our rights at work, providing Professional Indemnity Insurance and delivering professional advice on workplace issues.

Joining is easy and only takes a few minutes – just send them this link https://members.msav.org.au/

If you have any outstanding questions about the agreement please contact us on 9623 9623 or via email.

In fact, the myth about our workplaces being unproductive is extremely harmful when it just doesn’t reflect the reality

Each year the excuse of needing to increase productivity is used to withhold pay increases or to run stories about ‘lazy’ Australian workers. Just think how the private health sector continues to lag further and further behind the public health sector in pay rates. It’s little wonder that workers don’t want to stay in the private health sector.

The reality is that like other workers, you’re giving your employers your time and not being paid for it. Often we’ll tell ourselves it is all part of being a professional. Or that if we don’t do the extra work then it’ll be left for others. Or we’ll tell ourselves, or have managers and supervisors tell us, that if we don’t do the extra work a patient will be worse off.

The reality is that none of these are reasons to do unpaid work.

If your manager or supervisor isn’t able to properly do rosters so people aren’t forced to do unpaid work, then you shouldn’t feel obliged to do unpaid work. It’s their responsibility to ensure there are enough staff to do the work required, not yours. It also means that the real implications of increasing workloads and diminutions in staff levels are being hidden or not properly accounted.

And excessive workloads in many respects rob you of your ability to be professional.

When you are stressed and overworked errors can occur and mistakes can be amplified. Stress and being overworked can lead to serious health problems leading to increased time away from work.

We know from experience in representing members in disciplinary processes resulting from an error being made that there is not a single employer that accepts a defence of stress and anxiety from high workloads and pressure to get the job done.

Excessive workloads are not about you and your level of professionalism; it’s about management lacking the professionalism they demand of you.

At its core these issues speak to the growing concern that many vital services are reliant on you doing unpaid work; and an unspoken workplace culture of doing unpaid work. It is up to us fight back. It is up to us to protect our professions, wages and hard won conditions and rights at work.

While the Union has worked hard to address these issues through the latest round of public health sector bargaining with rostering protocols and requirements on backfilling temporarily vacant positions, the best way to fight back is to strengthen our collective voice by increasing our membership – please encourage your colleagues to join the Union. It only takes a couple of minutes and can be done from the comfort of home at: https://members.msav.org.au/register

We are absolutely livid and gutted that we have to start again after securing great outcomes in the agreement because of this minor but fatal technical error made by the Victorian Hospitals’ Industrial Association.

It’s particularly gutting since it’s already taken 18 months to get to this point. But there is some good news.

We have secured a guarantee that the terms of settlement will not change and that therefore the draft enterprise agreement that you approved in the recent ballot will be used again without any changes.

And there will be payments made before Christmas!

Through our concerted efforts the Victorian Government has authorised hospitals and health services to pay the wage increases described in the new agreement as if it were approved and in operation, effective immediately. This means that payments will be made before Christmas.

Public hospitals and health services have been advised to pay wage increases, back pay and the lump-sum payment at the earliest date, and prior to the commencement of the Christmas holiday period. This is excellent news, and we expect that employers will be organising payment shortly.

We’re working hard to resolve this problem created by the Victorian Hospitals’ Industrial Association as quickly as possible with no further glitches.

But what is the technical matter holding up our agreement?

The technical error that has caused our enterprise agreement approval by the Fair Work Commission to fail has resulted from firstly, critical mistakes being made by the VHIA (representing health services), and secondly, the Fair Work Act’s provisions being absurdly onerous and punitive. In effect, one employer out of 72, with one employee out of 5,575 employees covered by the agreement can bring the whole agreement down because of a technical administrative oversight.

It is clear that even though the offending employer participated in the vote, even if the one employee had voted, the vote could not have affected the ballot result one way or the other. A YES vote of 98.5% of 2,300 employees who voted could not have been compromised by this one vote.

The Fair Work Act requires that an employer must provide all employees proposed to be covered by an enterprise agreement with a Notice of Employee Representative Rights (NERR). The NERR informs staff that bargaining for a new agreement will commence and that anyone covered by the agreement has the right to be represented. The NERR must be provided at the very beginning of negotiations.

The VHIA advised all employers that were to be covered by our agreement to do this and provided them with a copy of the NERR. Most of you would have received a copy of this form from your employer earlier this year.

The issue is that not all employers distributed this notice as required by the Act. A small number of small country hospitals failed to provide this notice to their employees. It was the responsibility of the VHIA to follow this up and they failed to do so. Of the eight employers in this category, seven would have been compliant for a number of technical reasons. Only one small regional health service got it competently wrong causing the failure.

As a result, the Fair Work Commission cannot approve the application made by the VHIA to approve the agreement and we now need to repeat the formal bargaining steps (NERRs, ballot, etc) Note, that the Union and the VHIA have agreed to not raise new claims, seek to reopen old claims or attempt to vary the draft agreement that you voted on. Further, an agreed schedule of actions and timelines will see ‘bargaining’ completed and a vote for the ‘new’ agreement finalised by 15 December 2016, with an application to the FWC to approve the agreement made the same day.

The situation we are in, although absurdly wrong, is facilitated by a provision of the Fair Work Act that the Federal Parliament is currently looking to change for this reason. However, the law is the law even if it is broken. This is one more reason why we need to Change the Rules, by supporting the Union movement’s campaign to change the Act to make it fair and balanced.

We have asked the Victorian Government to side with Victorian health workers and not hide behind a failed piece of Commonwealth legislation, which we’re pleased they have done.

We’ll keep you informed about what’s happening and when the new vote will be held.

If you have any questions please get in touch with us via email or on (03) 9623 9623.

We are absolutely livid and gutted that we have to start again because of this minor but fatal technical error made by the Victorian Hospitals’ Industrial Association.

But there is some good news. We have secured a guarantee that the terms of settlement will not change. And we’ve asked the Victorian Government to ensure that the first scheduled wage increase; back pay and the good will payment are made before Christmas.

An agreed timeline will see ‘bargaining’ completed and a vote for the ‘new’ agreement finalised by 15 December 2016, with an application to the FWC to approve the agreement made the same day.

What is the technical matter holding up our agreement?

The technical error has resulted from critical mistakes being made by the VHIA and the Fair Work Act’s provisions being absurdly onerous and punitive. In effect, one employer out of 72, with one employee out of 5,575 employees covered by the agreement can bring the whole agreement down because of a technical administrative oversight.

The VHIA advised all employers that they needed to do this and provided them with a copy of the appropriate form. Unfortunately not all employers distributed this notice as required by the Act. It was the responsibility of the VHIA to follow this up and they failed to do so.

As a result, the Fair Work Commission is unable to approve our agreement without going through the formal bargaining steps again.

The Victorian Government, however, can make the wage payments in the timeframe that they would have if the agreement was approved . We’ve asked them to side with Victorian workers and not hide beyond an obscure piece of Commonwealth legislation.

We’re working hard to resolve this problem and we’ll keep you informed about what’s happening.

Questions? Get in touch with us via email or on (03) 9623 9623.