Andrews Government failing health workers on latest agreement
The Union is extremely disappointed that the Andrews Government continues to sit on its hands to approve the new enterprise agreement for the State’s medical scientists, psychologists and pharmacists.
The Union worked with public hospitals and their representatives to reach agreement on key terms and conditions and now the Andrews Government is taking longer to sign off on the new agreement than it took to negotiate and draft the agreement. The Government’s dysfunction is holding up payments of up to $2,000 for public health sector workers covered by this agreement. We have been advised that the terms and conditions of the new deal are supported by the Government but final approval is delayed by bureaucratic dispute between two Government departments about how to manage finances.
It’s also frustrating as the delay in signing off on the new agreement will not create any savings for the Government and is at odds with the promised Daniel Andrews made about public sector bargaining.
We are now facing further delay because some bureaucrats and Ministers aren’t able to organise a meeting to get together to approve the agreement, which would take all of 5 minutes given that all of the work has already been done.
The Government’s dysfunction forces the Union to now seriously consider making application to the Fair Work Commission to take industrial action – not over our claims or wage increases because these are agreed, but to force the Government to finalise a bureaucratic step that should have been completed at least 5 months ago.
Hospital services disrupted by industrial action because this Government is incapable of finalising a straight forward approval process; we understood this is the exact opposite of what Daniel Andrews promised when he came to office.
