WHAT’S UP DOC: The Bundaberg office of Medical Director where workers are set to be locked out over an industrial dispute. Max Fleet BUNOMD
THIRTEEN Bundaberg workers will be locked out of their workplace tomorrow following an ongoing industrial dispute with their employer Medical Director, trading as Health Communication Network.
Australia Services Union Bundaberg organiser Donna Webster is representing the workers and said the union members had been trying to resolve the issue since December.
“They’ve been patiently trying to negotiate with their employer to resolve underpayment of wages and have a better employment agreement,” Ms Webster said.
Medical Director is a company providing patient record software to general practitioners.
The company’s Bundaberg staff provide IT support to maintain the software across Australasia.
Ms Webster said staff were IT specialists but were being paid a clerical wage.
She said it was believed some of the full-time workers were paid as little as $24,000 a year.
“It’s really phenomenally low,” she said.
Ms Webster claimed when the company found out its employees had organised a protest outside their workplace to be held on Monday, April 20, it withheld the next two weeks of their pay and issued them with a notice of lockout.
A Medical Director spokesman confirmed that was the case.
“A decision was made to issue a notice of intended lock out to some employees in response to their choice of industrial action rather than engaging with the (Fair Work) Ombudsman to have their views heard,” he said.
A Fair Work spokesman confirmed Medical Director staff had made no requests for arbitration since 2010.
The Medical Director spokesman denied Ms Webster’s claim of a $24,000 wage.
“The minimum Clerical Award’s remuneration is $39,234 inclusive of superannuation and annual leave loading for a full-time employee,” he said.
“All customer care employees are remunerated above this minimum level.”
The Medical Director spokesman claimed the company had recently increased wages.
“A recent change in management identified that call-centre employees were not being paid under a specific award, resulting in the need for back-pay,” he said.
“This matter has been promptly resolved for staff who have signed new contracts which offer better overall terms than the benchmark award of the old contract.”
But Ms Webster said her union members did not want to sign on to the new clerk contracts.
“Our members said: ‘No. No – we’re IT people, we connect thousands of doctors all over Australasia with software, we’re not clerical workers’,” she said.
“And so that’s where it is. So basically the employer said ‘Well, no, accept it or not and until you do we’ll lock you out of the workplace’.”