Health minister strikes out at ambulance union calling it ‘inept’, but union says stop-work would only be used as a last resort in any industrial action
The Victorian health minister David Davis has described the leaders of the union representing paramedics across the state as “inept” and as “following their own political agenda”.
Davis made the comments after Ambulance Employees Australia apparently withdrew an application before Fair Work Australia to stop work for one-hour as part of industrial action. The action was proposed as part of disputes with the government over pay and working conditions.
The pay dispute has been a more than two-year battle, with the latest offer from the government – which included doubling the sign-on bonus to $3,000 – rejected by the union in July.
The stop-work action would have left significant areas of the state without emergency coverage, putting patients at risk, Davis said.
“I suspect that our hard-working and dedicated paramedics recognised this threat to patients and informed their inept union bosses that they would not tolerate such a ban,” Davis said.
“I believe our paramedics are starting to realise that their union leaders are following their own political agenda, and not acting in the interests of the members.
“The union leaders should be ashamed of themselves; they should get on with the job of representing their members rather than themselves, and finalise this [pay] agreement.”
But assistant secretary of the union, Danny Hill, said the stop-work proposal was only in the draft of their submission to Fair Work Australia.
It had been removed from the list of proposed industrial actions, he said, which included releasing ambulance response time data across the state without manager approval; and taking journalists and politicians on the road with paramedics as observers.
Stop work action had not been backed away from, Hill said, but would only be used as a last resort.
The dispute with the government was not just about pay, he said.
“We need the government to stop trying to take things away from us in return for a pay rise,” Hill said.
“Currently, their offer involves paramedics paying for their own pay rise by giving up other working conditions like union representation.
“And changes to the rural reserve system could see paramedics traveling into rural Victoria without any safeguards if they have children or elderly parents.”
He said 1,500 of the state’s 2,600 paramedics had indicated to the union that they planned to walk away from the job within five years because of burnout.