United Voice

Essential workers including enrolled nurses, patient care assistants, orderlies and cleaners at the hospital have not had a pay rise for 17 months because of Peel management’s refusal to bargain in good faith.
Initially, the industrial action will involve workers wearing specially-made t-shirts, stickers and wristbands instead of their standard uniforms so that every visitor to the privately-run public hospital will know the workers are unhappy. The t-shirts will state ‘WA’s Lowest Paid Hospital Worker’ and ‘Privatisation Stinks’.
The industrial action may also involve stop work meetings of up to one hour. The industrial action is expected to begin next week.

'Unreasonable behaviour'
“Staff have been driven to take this action because of the unreasonable behaviour of management at Peel,” said Carolyn Smith, assistant secretary of the LHMU.
“These vital workers are already way behind the pay rates of their colleagues doing equivalent jobs in government hospitals. And as living expenses soar in the state, their employers have the gall to offer them a paltry increase which would see them effectively lose money if they were to accept it.”
Peel’s final offer to its employees was just 1.7%, 1.7% and 1.7%. They said this was not negotiable. The rises also come nowhere near the state government’s modest CPI projections of 2.5%, 3% and 3% for the next three years.
In previous meetings Peel management justified their tight-fistedness by saying they could pay what they wanted because there was nowhere else in the Mandurah region for such employees to work.
The workers, who are the lowest paid hospital workers in the state, want increases of 4.5% in the first year and 4% in the second and third years.

Community support
Ms Smith also said any industrial action taken by the workers was designed to minimise disruption to patients as much as possible.
“These essential workers care deeply about the well-being of patients – they wouldn’t be working at the hospital if they didn’t – and so every effort will be made to minimise disruption to their care,” she said.
“We are confident we have the support of the community in this matter. Patients and their families have expressed their backing for union members at Peel in their claim for a fair and decent pay increase.”
Ms Smith said the behaviour of the private firm running Peel did not bode well for those who end up working in WA’s new hospitals which the government want to privatise.
Essential services in the Fiona Stanley hospital, Midland Health Campus, Albany Health Campus and the new childrens’ hospital in Perth will be privatised under government plans.
“This is what happens when hospitals get run by private, profit-focused businesses,” she said.
“If Fiona Stanley is privatised then we fear the problems will be on a far bigger scale than those experienced by Peel employees.”