A Return to the Bad Old Days of the Last Liberal Government & the Kennett Era of the 1990s

The awarding of the Western Health contact to private operators Dorevitch Pathology can only have happened with the imprimatur and agreement of the state Liberal government. The service was already contracted out, but to the public sector provider, Melbourne Health. This was as a result of the splitting apart of Western Health and Melbourne Health in 2000.

The Union is opposed to such privatisations, especially of clinical services such as pathology. The experience of members involved in such privatisations has been that often turn around time targets are often unable to be met, that staffing levels are cut and workloads increase, and that in many cases the private operators are unable to provide the contracted number of pathologists on site.

It seems that the current Liberal government is prepared to support privatisation and contracting out.

Meanwhile we have notified a dispute to FWA over Melbourne Health’s failure to consult over redundancy pay.