Melbourne Pathology Industrial Action
For more than a decade, Melbourne Pathology has sat on an expired Enterprise Agreement with its Medical Scientists and Technicians.
Despite boasting about record profits during recent years, made largely off the back of their scientific workforce, every request to make modest improvements in conditions and wages was refused.
The scientific workforce at Melbourne Pathology has been taking industrial action for nearly a month, a very uncommon practice for medical scientists and technicians.
Melbourne Pathology’s management seem to have forgotten the long hours of their staff, dealing with the unknown, to ensure the speedy turnaround of COVID test results during the height of the pandemic.
Melbourne Pathology’s scientists and technicians continue to fall further behind in pay and conditions and are well behind the benchmark in Victoria.
Because of the continued unwillingness of Melbourne Pathology to make a pay offer that properly respects their skill and value in the marketplace, the scientific workforce will be stopping work on Thursday 9 May from 12pm to 2pm
The industrial action has had no impact on patients’ samples being tested and reported as soon as possible. Ensuring patient care is a top priority.
Quotes attributable to Matt Hammond, Secretary, HSU Victoria #4 branch:
“At every stage of negotiations for a new Enterprise Agreement, Melbourne Pathology has moaned about the cost of improving their scientific workforce’s pay and conditions. But say nothing about the CEO of Sonic Health, the parent company of Melbourne Pathology, who was named as being in the top 10 highest paid CEOs in Australia.”
“The behaviour of Melbourne Pathology’s management in refusing to acknowledge the skill and value of their scientific workforce shows disregard, disrespect and a failure to understand their motivation for being medical scientists and lab technicians.”
“In an extremely uncommon practice for medical scientists and technicians, they are taking industrial action and stopping work to express their frustration with a company that seems to value profits more than its people.”
“Being called heroes publicly doesn’t help pay the bills and Melbourne Pathology is becoming an unattractive employer for many in the medical science community.”
“Medical scientists and technicians would prefer to be solely focused on helping patients get their diagnosis so they can start treatment as quickly as possible, but they have a right to a quality of life too.”
