United Voice News
Hospital support workers lead community in noisy rally outside Premiers office over privatisation
Hospital support workers across the state have returned to work after being on strike for up to three-and-a-half hours yesterday.
Many who work in metro hospitals were among hundreds to attend a community rally outside the Premier’s office on St George’s Terrace at lunchtime. There was also a strong presence from allied health professionals and other unions.
Opposition leader Eric Ripper led calls on the Barnett government to scrap its plans to privatise the Fiona Stanley Hospital, Midland Health Campus, and the new children’s hospital. He also made a commitment that if elected in 2013, a Labor Government will do all that it can to terminate the Serco contract.
Campaign mascot Sam the Superbug gee’ed up the crowd while A. Robot delivered a job application to the government’s offices to work in the new Fiona Stanley hospital. The Premier refused to come down and address the angry crowd.
Hospital support workers in country hospitals also joined the strike and spent time leafleting and talking to their communities about the dangers of privatisation.
Carolyn Smith, assistant secretary of the LHMU said: “This was an incredibly strong show of support for our In Public Hands campaign – this government will ignore us at their peril.”
“The community doesnt want private firms like Serco running down our public hospitals so they can make a fast buck. Colin Barnett goes on about privatisation enabling him to make “efficiency savings” at hospitals and yet there he is sitting pretty on top of a large surplus. All the people here today understand that it just doesn’t make sense.”
Dan Hill, secretary of the HSU said: “The members of our unions know that privatisation will impact job security, pay rates and the quality of patient care if privatisation is allowed to happen in any of our public hospitals.
“As this rally has shown, members of the public are also very worried about the plans. They can remember that privatisation of cleaning services at Royal Perth Hospital by the Liberal Court government in the 1990s contributed to the VRE superbug outbreak in 2001. More than 170 people were infected and it cost $2.1million to clean up.”
