The contract for the provision of pathology services to Western Health (Western Hospital, Sunshine Hospital and Williamstown Hospital) has been awarded to Dorevitch Pathology (owned by Primary Health).

The contract has been held by Melbourne Health since 2000 when the North West Health Care Network was dismantled and Western Health and Melbourne Health were established as separately incorporated health services.

The contractual arrangements between Western Health Dorevitch Pathology mandate that Dorevitch Pathology offers employment to all Melbourne Health staff who will be made redundant by Melbourne Health, and that transferring staff are to be employed under the terms and conditions of the public sector agreement.

This flows from the provisions of Schedule G of the public sector collective agreement.

Discussions with Melbourne Health

Melbourne Health is maintaining that it is not liable to pay redundancy payments to affected staff, claiming that it has legal advice to that effect. But MH is refusing to provide us with this supporting legal advice. Our advice is that redundancy payments must be made by MH under Schedule H of the public sector collective agreement.

It is agreed that the change of provider from MH to Dorevitch is Transfer of Business. As such staff were advised that their service with MH would be recognised as service with Dorevitch, and that all accrued entitlements, including personal leave, would transfer to Dorevitch.

Without advising either scientists or the Union, MH is now reneging on that position and is saying that annual leave and accrued long service leave (where a staff member has over 10 years’ service) will be paid out by MH and not transferred to Dorevitch, and that there will be no transfer of personal leave. We are suitably outraged by MH’s behaviour, and intend calling MH to account.

We expect that both these matters (redundancy and transfer of entitlements) will go to FWA next week. If we cannot reach agreement with MH in that forum we look like being in the Federal Court.

We note that HR at Melbourne Health may be leaving themselves open to prosecution for misrepresentation if they persist in advising staff that they have no entitlement to redundancy pay.

MH Redeployment Period

We had to take Melbourne Health to FWA in order to get HR to withdraw notices that had been sent to scientists employed at Footscray and Sunshine advising them that they had been placed on the redeployment register. Schedule H provides that the redeployment period cannot start until consultation has occurred.

Consultation with MH

Consultation cannot occur until the scientists and the Union have been provided with the relevant information in writing. Despite being advised more than two weeks ago that the Western Health contract had been lost, Melbourne Health failed to provide us with an impact statement until yesterday.

Discussions with Dorevitch Pathology

We have begun discussions with Dorevitch Pathology about the terms and conditions of the public sector collective agreement, and their application to transferring employees – i.e. employees who transfer from MH – and to new employees who may be recruited to service the Western Health contract.

There a number of complex issues which need to be addressed, including the application of the public sector agreement to transferring and new employees past its nominal expiry date on 31 December 2011.

Dorevitch Pathology undertook to provide written responses to our questions by 27 July 2011.

Because of the uncertainty regarding MH’s position in relation to redundancy payments and the transfer of entitlements, Dorevitch Pathology has agreed to extend the timelines for the acceptance of job offers from Dorevitch to 12 August 2011, an extension of two weeks. This was recommended by FWA yesterday.