United Voice News
Hospital cleaners made permanent
Seventeen cleaners whose permanent positions at the Royal Perth Hospital were put on indefinite hold after the state government’s health budget cuts, have won permanency after an eight month battle with management.
The cleaners had been on temporary and casual contracts at the hospital but successfully applied for permanent positions in March 2009.
They went through the full application process, including interviews, but were dismayed when the health minister Dr Kim Hames’ budget cuts meant they did get their jobs.
Brodie Clayton, LHMU delegate and a cleaner at the hospital said: “The workers then spent the next eight months being chopped and changed from casual to fixed term contracts even though some of them had been working as casuals for as long as two years.”
“It was devastating for them to have this permanent position snatched from them. How are you supposed to plan ahead when you’re only a casual or on a temporary contract?
“They had also been through a proper recruitment process. To treat essential and hard working members of staff in this way was completely out of order.”
Consistent pressure
But after LHMU delegates at the hospital like Brodie applied consistent pressure to senior management in meetings over a period of eight months, the decision was reversed and the positions were awarded to the successful applicants on Christmas Eve.
Carolyn Smith, assistant secretary of the LHMU, warned that this kind of issue could become more common if Troy Buswell’s privatisation policy at hospitals was allowed to continue.
“In the past, the privatisation of hospital services has led to staffing levels being cut and this leading to problems with infection control,” she said.
“In the end, services, such as the orderlies at Sir Charles Gardiner Hospital in 2000, had to be brought back under government control because they were in such a mess. This ended up costing the public money, not saving it.”
