We wrote to HR manager Pip Rose about questions raised by members at the Burnie and Mersey labs, but she was on leave with nobody monitoring her emails, so we only heard back last week.

Firstly, we asked about the 2021 roster review email sent to Mersey staff because members want to know if the roster changes would be similar to the Burnie lab’s and would they lose hours or have to do more weekends and nights.

We also asked when the consultation process would begin and when the changes might occur.

Pip said, “We have not undertaken a roster review at our Burnie Laboratory at the Medical Centre in recent times. Staff are guaranteed hours on their contract, we have no intention of amending these. It is premature to comment on the outcome of the roster as we haven’t commenced consultation. The last roster review we did took 6 months from commencement of consultation to implementation”.

We told her Burnie lab members say they’ve been constantly working short staffed with no backfilling when staff are sick or on leave and there’s confusion around why some staff on long service leave get paid for what they’d normally have worked including weekend penalties, while others get no penalties.

Pip said, “Staff numbers have been maintained during periods of leave and as such this statement is not correct. Staff are paid according to the timesheets that they submit – they are responsible for entering the shifts for the period they would have been working when they are on leave”.

We mentioned that members at both sites worry they don’t know enough about the new Kronos scheduling system, and were told, “Staff training is part of the implementation plan for Kronos”.

Lastly, we told Pip several members in SRA at the Burnie lab used to do their 75 hours per fortnight Monday to Friday and were often rostered on a weekend where they’d receive overtime, but now when they work a weekend, they’re told they must have an RDO on the following Monday.

When they do work weekends, they do an extra two hours, so where they’d normally work 75 hours for the fortnight they now do 77, and it seems they’ve been told to put the extra two Sunday hours on their timesheet instead of being paid overtime.

Pip said, ”The weekend roster is being incorporated into normal hours, thus a Saturday may be rostered in place of hours on another day. I am not familiar with a formal RDO process being implemented and shall look into how this is being communicated and subsequently paid”.

The responses are brief but hopefully they provide answers to your questions.