Nurses want the WA Government to exempt health professionals from its new policy to replace older workers with younger and cheaper ones.
The Australian Nursing Federation state secretary Mark Olson said the savings measure was dangerous and would put lives at risk.
The Government’s workforce renewal policy began on January 1 but already nurses want it scrapped.
“I think every health professional should be exempt from this stupid policy,” Mr Olson said.
“Patients lives will be put at risk if this policy is implemented throughout the Health Department.”
Facing a deficit budget, the State Government wants to save $1.2 billion over the next three years by replacing workers who retire or resign with younger, cheaper ones.
From now, new frontline workers, including nurses, teachers and police will earn 10 per cent less than the person they replace.
All other public servants will earn 40 per cent less than their predecessors.
A Government spokesman said the workforce renewal policy would not be changed.
In a statement the spokesman said: “It is not the intention to have lower paid people performing the roles of higher paid personnel. Nor is it the intent to have lesser qualified people perform the work of more highly qualified people.”
Replacing experienced nurses with graduates ‘plain dangerous’
Mr Olson said replacing experienced nurses with those recently out of study was a recipe for disaster.
“If a junior staff member doesn’t have the appropriate senior staff member to go to, to make those critical life-saving decisions that are made on a daily basis by our health professionals, I think the public understands what I’m talking about,” he said.
“I think it’s a preposterous notion that you can replace people based on the cheapest possible alternative, rather than employing the most suitable candidate to do the job.
“It’s a preposterous and silly notion in most Government departments – in health it just becomes plain dangerous.
“Our hospitals work because we have an appropriate mixture of experienced staff with junior staff and that mixture is worked out at the ward level by the managers, by the nurse managers, by the Directors of Nursing and it shouldn’t be interfered with by some bod from the Treasury department just trying to save a few bucks.
“People when they’re turning up to our emergency departments want to know that there’s the appropriate mixture of staff so they can get help, they don’t want to know that the hospitals are being staffed by juniors because as good as those junior staff are, they rely on an appropriate number of experienced staff for help.”
The State Opposition said the loss of experience would be felt throughout the entire public service.
Shadow Treasurer Ben Wyatt said the quality of the public service would be greatly diminished.
“I’m stunned that in 2015 we’re seeing a government resort to such archaic lazy policy measures to to achieve savings,” said Mr Wyatt.
“It won’t result in good public sector outcomes. It’s West Australians who are going to be paying. They’re going to see a decline in the services that they’re used to receiving and are quite rightly entitled to receive.”