The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) counted the protected industrial action ballots on Friday last week.

The view of members has been made crystal clear with very strong YES votes across all of the health services. The level of YES vote range from 83% to 100% in favour of taking industrial action.

In fact, the AEC ballot declarations show members at five health services recorded 100% YES votes!

That’s the good news in relation to the ballots. The bad news is that due to technical issues the Fair Work Act throws up and what appear to be some anomalies in the information provided to the AEC, not all health services balloted will, at this stage, be able to take industrial action.

An example of an anomaly the Union is now investigating relates to Southern Health. A number of memebrs employed at Southern Health were not included on the roll of names provided to the AEC – even though one member has been employed by SH for nearly 25 years.

Importantly though, our major metropolitan and some regional health services are free to start taking industrial action straight away. The union will not delay the industrial action campaign until the anomalies in the ballot for some of the health services are resolved.

A meeting of Reps is scheduled for this Thursday to start planning for the commencement of industrial action. Meetings of members will shortly be called to discuss and implement industrial action.

Members are reminded:

YOU ARE THE UNION

We cannot achieve great things without YOUR support.

Please keep yourself up to date with all developments so that we can represent YOUR views & interests knowing that YOU WILL support the fight for YOUR wages and conditions.

Invite your colleagues to join the Union NOW!

By the way:

Employers claim there is no workload problem in the public sector.

In an astounding response to your claims to redress the current workload crisis, health services say there is no workload problem and that there is no noticeable amount of unpaid work being performed.

This response shows that health service executives are either utterly ignorant (or uncaring maybe) about what is going on in their own workplaces, or are now in the business of denying the blatantly obvious. Either way it is offensive that serious issues of high workloads, with all of the suffering that comes with this, and unpaid work are denied by highly paid executives.