On Friday we met with senior management, including Deputy Secretary Dale Webster, to finally get some answers about how we can make our public hospitals safer for workers and the community.

While we welcome Dale and others in their efforts to develop safer processes when it comes to patients, their families and other community members it’s been long enough – especially when it comes to orderly and attendant classifications.

We made it clear that all workers going to code blacks should at the minimum be classified as a Health Service Officer Level 5.

The role of keeping our hospitals safe gets harder every day and your classification urgently needs to be increased to recognise the knowledge and skill you have when dealing with what are often difficult and challenging situations.

We’ve again put the Deputy Secretary on notice that workers expect their positions to be reclassified as a matter of urgency. We’ve also set up meetings with your delegates to talk more about this and we’ll be having membership meetings soon to keep you updated on how this goes.

We’re hopeful that this week’s meeting will be successful – but in the event that we can’t get a commitment around your classification we’ll need to talk to you about the possibility of taking industrial action to make sure you’re being paid correctly and recognised for what you do.

Make sure you keep an eye out for updates about a member meeting soon, and in the meantime if you have any questions, please get in touch with us via HACSUassist.