Health workers anxious wait over last pay packet for financial year
Thousands of public health workers have an anxious wait to find out if their last pay packet for the financial year will include last year’s agreed 2.5 per cent pay rise.
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THOUSANDS of public health workers have an anxious wait to find out if their last pay packet for the financial year will include last year’s 2.5 per cent pay rise.
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Staff are expecting their last pay packets for the financial year on Wednesday but an email on Friday alerted them to a delay in online pay advice slips.
Online pay advice slips were supposed to be available on Saturday but staff are still waiting after the state government introduced legislative amendments to the Industrial Relations Act last week.
The amendments, yet to be passed, allow a wage freeze which will affect all health workers in the 2020-21 financial year, which starts on July 1.
Union representatives sent staff emails on Friday alerting them to the changes.
The legislation changes the timing of 2020 pay increases for public sector workers with certified agreements for medical officers and school teachers, but it moves the pay rises of nurses and midwives to 2021.
“We understand that these increases are now deferred rather than lost as would have been the case under a freeze,” a Together Union email said.
“This means these workers will not receive an increase in the 2020/21 financial year but will receive two 2.5 per cent increases in the 2021/22 financial year.”
The current legislation does not affect the timing of the 2.5 per cent increases for uncertified agreements in Queensland Health.
But unions were expecting the government to make further amendments to proposed increases, due in September and October, and has asked for urgent meetings with the state.
The legislation will require the majority of parties to any pay deal to support the revised certified agreements before they can be enacted by the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission but the legislation does not specify the process.
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Union representatives plan to meet with Queensland Health this week to clarify the process but believed a meeting would not happen until after the legislation has passed.
The legislation does not reference a $1250 one-off payment that was part of the offer to health workers last year.
The unions said agreements would have to be certified before September in order to secure deals for clinical assistants, medical physicists, allowances for rural and remote workers and other benefits negotiated and won last year.