As members know the sticking point in our negotiations with the government has been their failure to offer members employed in public health the same order of pay rises as nurses. The reason as you know is that there are no productivity offsets that can be identified – you are already efficient. Therefore, you don’t get the average 3.4% increase nurses got which is based on anticipated efficiency gains. In the Alice in Wonderland world of the Victorian Treasury inefficiency gets rewarded and efficiency does not.

The meeting of members held at Trades Hall on Wednesday 12 December 2007 passed the following resolution:

This meeting condemns the Victorian Government for its failure to negotiate in good faith with our Union for our next enterprise agreement. The current agreement expired on 1 October 2007 and the Government has obstructed all our attempts to negotiate a resolution of this dispute.

As a sign of good faith, and as an initial step towards achieving the framework for an agreement, we demand that the Government immediately agree to salary increases that are at least equivalent to those given to nurses, with the same operative dates. Further we seek an agreed timetable for negotiation of our career structure and conditions matters with a view to their finalisation by 15 January 2008.

Unless this demand is met by Friday 14 December 2007 we resolve to commence a campaign of industrial action.