We met with Healthscope to start bargaining for your new agreement, although we expressed our displeasure that they’d already met with AMNF and didn’t include us in that meeting. There wasn’t much progress but here’s the outcome of the meeting:

• No proposal to reduce your current conditions.
• Agreed to fix technical legal difficulties from the last bargain.
• Operative date and period of operation is to be confirmed, based on wage outcome.
• We seek 12% in wage increases over the life of the agreement in the following instalments; 4% on 1 July 2020 with back paid entitlements, 4% on 1 July 2021, 4% on 1 July 2022. Healthscope considered this ridiculous and said they’re not interested in back pay and their likely offer would be less than 2% per annum as they are the ‘market leader’ for wages.
• They said no to improved shift penalties.
• A casual employee who's been rostered on a regular basis over 26 weeks will be entitled to request conversion to permanent employment provided the pattern of work hasn’t resulted from coverage of extended absence such as maternity, long service or workers compensation leave and extended personal leave - Conversion in Modern Award after 12 months.
• Casuals to be paid 25% casual loading in addition for all hours when compared to permanent staff, consistent with the Modern Award for casuals, but they said no unless legally obliged.
• By their own admission it’s rarely used, but Healthscope still said no to increasing Domestic Violence Leave from 5 to 10 paid days per annum, non-accumulative.
• They said no to Bereavement Leave increase from 3 to 10 days paid leave, non-consecutive, for immediate family/household deaths (unpaid for casuals) – we argued 3 days aren’t sufficient.
• They’ll consider bereavement leave for still births that occur after 16 weeks gestation.
• As for the workload consultation committee changes for real outcomes to improve daily workloads, Healthscope doesn’t believe there are any workload issues.
• Union delegate rights.
• Healthscope said no to paid days for delegate training.

As you can see it wasn’t a good start but we will push for a better agreement with the help of your bargaining reps. We next Meet in February which is a terribly long gap between meetings.