United Voice

74% agreed to accept Peel’s offer of 5.5%, 3% and 3% with sick leave penalties coming in after two days and their pay backdated to July 5.
This deal comes after a long and arduous fight with management, in which staff waited for almost two years for a pay rise. It also means that unfortunately the ENs and support workers at Peel are still lagging behind their colleagues in government hospitals in terms of their pay and conditions.
From the very beginning of negotiations back in 2008, Peel management used every trick in the book to delay and at one point were only bargaining via fax machine. LHMU had to go to Fair Work Australia to order them to begin negotiating in good faith.
They also effectively locked out workers who wore t-shirts stating ‘Lowest paid hospital worker in WA. Privatisation stinks’ over their uniforms in May.
And in their final desperate act, Peel management attempted to split the agreement and separate the enrolled nurses from the health support workers. The agreement for ENs would have been exactly the same as the agreement for the health support workers so the only reason they did this was to divide the workforce and make ENs a small and vulnerable group. The commission ruled the agreement could not be split.
Carolyn Smith, assistant secretary of the LHMU said: “This offer is not everything the members wanted but by taking action and keeping the pressure on, they have moved Peel management’s offer up quite significantly. The members are prepared to accept that and are happy the dispute has been finalised.
“The members should feel incredibly proud of their efforts which have included stop work meetings, a t-shirt and sticker protest and speaking to the media. All these actions and more have kept the pressure on Peel. Congratulations to them.”
In May, Peel were offering workers including patient care assistants, kitchen staff, orderlies and cleaners, just 1.7%, 1.7% and 1.7% with no back pay. They said this offer was not negotiable.
The workers staged a stop work meeting and urged health minister Kim Hames to intervene after the hospital’s CEO Bill Shields resigned suddenly after only four months in the job. Unfortunately Mr Hames only met with Peel Health Campus’ chief Jon Fogarty.
Ms Smith added that the experience of workers at Peel should act as a warning to hospital workers across the state who are facing the very real threat of working in a privatised hospital under the Liberal government’s agenda for new hospitals in WA.
“Private operators are focused more on the bottom line than they are about patient care or their staff. We fear that the problems being experienced at Peel will be on a far bigger scale if Fiona Stanley, Midland Health Campus and the new children’s hospital are privatised.”