***PATHOLOGY WORKERS ON STRIKE*** I'm usually pretty quiet on this platform, but I just HAD to share something I've been working on for almost 18 months now. Medical Laboratory Scientists and Technicians working at Melbourne Pathology have been taking Industrial Action for the past 3 weeks, fighting for a fair deal. These are the people who perform diagnostic tests and clinical services to GPs and a range of private hospitals. If you're getting a blood test or giving a urine sample to your doctor, for instance, there's a good chance that our members are the ones running the tests to get your results. These workers at Melbourne Pathology are on old enterprise agreements that nominally expired between 8 and 12 years ago. While their employer has thrown them a pay rise here and there, their conditions have fallen drastically behind contemporary standards in the health sector. We've been bargaining now for 18mths and the company is determined to only offer a dud deal. Melbourne Pathology is part of the Sonic Health empire - a huge corporate network that raked in net profits of $1.5 BILLION in 2022, and $685 million in 2023. And yet this company is crying poor, and telling its workers it can't afford to offer them a fair deal. If that isn't the face of corporate greed in Australia in 2024, what is? These workers have been taking Industrial Action in the form of various work bans, while ensuring patient safety remains paramount. For the overwhelming majority of these workers, it's their first time engaging in industrial action. Tomorrow, Thursday 9 May, they're walking off the job for 2 hours in our first strike action. I could not be prouder of this workforce standing together in the fight for a fair deal. If you're around Powlett Reserve in East Melbourne tomorrow between 12-2pm, come on by and show support while we hold a Union BBQ to support these workers. Please like and share this post to help spread the word, and send through any messages or photos of solidarity and support to enquiry@msav.org.au. #msav #fairpaymelbpath #fight4fair
For more than a decade, Melbourne Pathology has not completed a new Enterprise Agreement with its Medical Scientists and Technicians. Despite boasting about record profits during recent years, made largely off the back of the hard work of their scientific workforce, every request to make modest improvements in conditions and wages was refused. They seem to have forgotten about the heroic efforts of their staff, putting themselves at risk, to ensure the speedy turnaround of COVID test results during the pandemic. Melbourne Pathology’s scientists and technicians are now among the lowest paid in the Sonic Health empire and continue to fall further behind their colleagues in other states. They are well behind the benchmark in Victoria. Among the matters being refused by the company’s management is to pay for training and career development (primarily conferences) covering new processes and operations of new testing machines. Hardly the level of quality you’d expect from a company whose marketing pitch is about how quality is in their DNA. During our recent efforts to negotiate a new Agreement, Melbourne Pathology management made offers they knew their staff would refuse. At every stage they have moaned about the cost of improving scientist and technician pay and conditions. But say nothing about the CEO of Sonic Health, the parent company of Melbourne Pathology, who was named as being in the top 10 highest paid CEOs in Australia. This behaviour shows disregard, disrespect and failure to understand the motivation of their scientific workforce. It’s no wonder they have a staff retention problem. If you want a case study in bad management, follow us here on LinkedIn.