The Malinauskas Labor Government is being hit with another large industrial protest, with more than 1,000 South Australian health support workers implementing sweeping work bans.
The workers are protesting inadequate pay at a time when crushing cost of living is severely impacting their ability to provide safe support services for South Australians.
Quotes attributable to Liz Kimber, worker at Lyell McEwin Hospital for 26 years and a United Workers Union Delegate:
“Wages are not keeping up, and with the cost-of-living crisis it means they’re actually going backwards. One of my coworkers can’t afford to feed her family and herself, so she often skips meals because she puts her kids first. Another, lives in the northern suburbs, is in her 40s and has to live in a share house because she can’t afford rent. If she can’t afford rent, how will she ever afford to buy her own home? We simply can’t afford to continue to work for the Malinauskas government.
“When they opened new beds we had to fight to get the government to agree we needed more staff to support them but because we don’t pay enough we advertised the same job three times with no suitable applicants.”
Liz works as a menu monitor in the kitchens providing food for the whole hospital.
“We’re the ones who provide patients with something they can control in an otherwise chaotic time. We’re the ones who make your Dad get the right food because he is a stroke patient and can’t swallow. Without us, there can be no hospital.
“It makes my day when I hear a patient is getting better and going home but this comes at a cost – as a nanna it means missing out on time with my grandchildren as I often miss family functions because I’m at work. I’d love to retire but because of the low wages I just can’t,” she said.
The workers who are taking action include theatre orderlies, patient service assistants, central sterilised stores department technicians (sterilise equipment used in surgical procedures), menu monitors, chefs, team members from ancillary services (provide cleaning and kitchen services).
These workers provide support services that keep the health system running and take this action to show the Malinauskas government they’re committed to fighting for fair wages, an ongoing commitment to same job, same pay, and insourcing hospital support services.
The industrial action includes work bans across 10 hospitals and health services including the Flinders Medical Centre, the largest insourced hospital in the state and the Minister for Health Chris Picton’s local hospital.
This action compounds the actions taken by more than 1,000 disability support workers in the Department of Human Services, who have been implementing work bans since 8 February and writing messages on their DHS vans including “Department of Horrific Shortages”.
Background
From 7 am Saturday 22 February approximately 700 workers began action. From 7 am today, Monday 24 February approximately 300 more workers joined them, including theatre orderlies at Flinders Medical Centre. The work bans will continue until an agreement is reached.
The hospitals and health services sites where workers are taking action are Repat Health Service, Flinders Medical Centre, Noarlunga Health Service, Gawler Health Service, Lyell McEwin Hospital, The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Mount Barker Hospital, Royal Adelaide Hospital, the Women’s and Children’s Hospital and SA Pathology.
The work bans include: not cleaning the CEO and managers offices, not performing duties above their classification level or for which they have not been trained, changing in and out of scrubs in paid time, only handling sterile equipment once it has cooled to a safe temperature, completing only critical paperwork, not maintaining vehicle log books, reporting breaches of agency staff being used before permanent and casuals are offered hours, and campaign messages written in chalk on concord walkways, glass in doorways and wards.
All actions have been carefully designed to ensure patient care, safety and support will not be compromised.
Health support workers have four key claims:
1. Fair wages including same job, same pay. For example, state government-employed aged care workers are paid the same as workers in private aged care and a new classification structure so that the classification structure reflects the work that is performed.
2. Secure jobs so that full-time work is the default employment model. For example at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital, 19.3% of Union members are casual – nearly double any other workgroup.
3. Safe workplaces including enough staff to perform the job safely. Whilst the government has increased the number of beds and corresponding doctors, nurses and ambulance officers, they have not increased the number of health support workers i.e. hospital cleaners, catering staff, patient service assistants, theatre orderlies, central sterilised stores department technicians.
4. Respect including insourcing currently outsourced health support services across various roles and locations.
ENDS
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