THE WAGES DISPUTE THAT’S A BATTLEGROUND FOR CANCER TREATMENT

Asking for more pay isn’t really about the pay

What do cancer treatment in north west Tasmania and a public sector wages dispute have in common?

Allied health professionals.

Radiation therapists, to be specific.

And the fact that Tasmania can’t seem to keep any working in our health system.

At the moment, you may be surprised to learn that there’s a machine that should be used to administer radiation therapy to cancer patients sitting unused at the North West Regional Hospital simply because the Tasmanian government cannot recruit or retain enough radiation therapists to staff it.

Radiation therapists say that one in three positions are currently vacant and unable to be filled.

“If radiation therapy was fully staffed, there wouldn’t be a waitlist,” a radiation therapist told us. “All treatments would proceed.”

A radiation therapy nurse told us this: “Without radiation therapists we are unable to treat patients. We are now unable to treat as many patients on the north west coast who desperately need our services. The north west coast of Tasmania has patients with more advanced cancer. We need to attract more radiation therapists with equal pay to mainland centres.”

We keep losing our allied health professionals to the mainland and other countries because we can’t offer good enough wages or living and working conditions to keep them here – and that’s why allied health professionals have been locked in battle with the government over the Allied Health and Radiation Therapists wages agreements.

It’s the same across all of our health services. From physiotherapy to pharmacy, from social work to radiation therapy, from mental health services to child safety and beyond, every area is struggling to keep the health professionals we need to care for Tasmanians.

We talk about pay a lot – but it isn’t really about the pay.

It’s about keeping health workers here in Tasmania, and boosting the wages in our health system is one of the only ways to do that.

Steve Hayes is a social worker and a clinical lead in the Mental Health Service in the North West, where he says, “It’s really hard for us to get the staff we need to do the work that we need to do. Most teams would be looking after about 150 people with severe and complex illness and most of the teams in the North West are running understaffed.”

“We’re doing the best we can with what we’ve got. Most allied health disciplines are trained here in Tasmania, so there’s an opportunity to bring people in straight from university if they’re not going somewhere else – to the mainland, or overseas. There should be an opportunity to keep them here. But for that, you need remuneration packages that encourage people to stay.”

“We do triage caseloads. Really urgent work, the difficult stuff, the stuff that has to be done – that gets done, because we just get it done somehow. If there’s no allied health in a multidisciplinary team, it’ll fall to other disciplines to pick it up.”

But for teams that are highly specialised, like radiation therapy, when you don’t have enough staff to run a service you simply can’t run it in your area. So when the government can’t staff that treatment machine out of the NWRH, patients are sent to Launceston for treatment – which can push Launceston radiation therapy services beyond their capacity in turn.

Steve sums it up: “The work that has to get done gets done. But unless you’ve got full staffed teams, you’re never going to be able to deliver the service that clients need.”

This is our health system. We all own it. We all rely on it. We should be able to staff it with the health professionals we need to care for us when we need it, and there’s no price you can put on that.

AHPs win a better offer

Because of allied health professionals’ industrial action, we have forced the government to come back and make some big improvements on their last offer to AHPs.

At the time of writing, AHPs are considering the government’s offer and will soon vote on it.

When we stick together and show that we’re willing to stand up for our services, we can always win.

Every Child Deserves A Worker

Child Safety workers have been taking bold actions to try and reform chronic and longstanding issues in the Tasmanian Child Safety Service. Back in September 2022 Child Safety workers took brave steps and spoke with the Premier, Jeremy Rockliff, about a service in crisis – and they’re still waiting for real change.

Workers are saying that they can no longer stand by while Child Safety and the Advice and Referral Line are critically under-resourced, and children reported at risk of neglect are not able to get the support that they so desperately need.

The service continues to decline with more staff leaving due to chronic recruitment and retention issues and workers have told us that every day without real change is another day closer to the collapse of the service all together. Not only is it unacceptable for the children workers are trying to protect, but it’s unacceptable for workers who have to face these kinds of stressful decisions every day about which child has to go without due to the sheer amount of workload the service is seeing.

New data from the Productivity Commission out this year has shown that in 2022 it took up to 20% longer to start and finish child safety investigations in Tasmania than in the year prior. We know that workers are under immense stress and are trying their best in a very limited system to stay on top of priority cases amongst severe understaffing.

In October 2022 their frustration culminated in powerful half day strikes across the state, with members in Hobart, Launceston and Burnie taking action to say that enough is enough. They marched with signs, spoke to media, and even protested outside Children and Youth Minister Roger Jaensch’s office. It’s never easy walking off the job, especially when you’re in an area as important as child safety and people are relying on you every day – but workers still stood up and took decisive action.

The action workers took sent a strong message to the government that they have to listen to the solutions their workforce is putting forward, and they must deliver a real strategy to fix the crisis the service is facing immediately. We’re continuing our campaign to keep the government accountable –every child deserves a voice, and every child deserves a worker.

Child safety workers are essential public service workers. They protect children, their families, and their futures. The government needs to start seeing them as essential and fixing this service which so many rely on. Together we can do this.

If you have any ideas for actions you’d like to take in your workplace, or would like more information about our campaign make sure you get in touch with us via HACSUassist on 1300 880 032 or via email at assist@hacsu.org.au