James O’Doherty: Pay rise for paramedics will have other unions lining up for their share
A historic wage deal has averted a potential New Year’s Eve crisis with no paramedics on duty — but given unions an early Christmas present, writes James O’Doherty.
Opinion
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Health Services Union boss Gerard Hayes is no stranger to a messy brawl with his own party.
Just ask former Labor leader Jodi McKay.
Back in February 2021, McKay’s leadership was on shaky ground after it was revealed she signed a letter of support for a child sex offender who was trying to get a visa to stay in Australia.
With McKay in damage control, Hayes and another Labor Right union leader, Daniel Walton, were walking the halls of Macquarie Street.
When I asked her if the pair were “doing the numbers” against her, McKay scoffed and declared she had Hayes’ and Walton’s “support”. That, Hayes said, was “bullshit”.
“We don’t offer blind loyalty, we expect outcomes,” the HSU secretary told me.
Hayes then stuck in the knife. Asked of McKay’s leadership, he said: “I don’t think we’re being effective”.
McKay survived those leadership wobbles but quit months later.
So, when Hayes announced in November that 1500 of his members were threatening to effectively quit the profession unless they got a more than 20 per cent pay rise, people around Health Minister Ryan Park started to panic.
The paramedics had the government over a barrel: Without renewing their professional registrations, they would legally be prevented from doing much more than driving ambulances.
The fears of a New Year’s Day Triple-Zero shutdown were real.
In averting the crisis with a historic wage deal this week, the government has secured a safe New Year’s Eve for revellers — but given itself a dangerous Christmas present: An expectation among other unions that they, too, can get a slice of the pie.
The $500 million deal secured average wage rises of more than 25 per cent for HSU paramedics. Base pay for a critical care paramedic will go from $98,390 to $127,261.
The paramedics had a strong case for their wage claim. Their jobs have changed significantly and they now do a lot more than just drive patients to hospitals.
They have to register as professional healthcare workers and they wanted professional rates of pay to recognise the skills they now need.
Queensland is also offering our paramedics up to $20,000 in cash incentives to jump across the border.
Theirs was a “special case,” Treasurer Daniel Mookhey said.
“Paramedics for the last two years at least have been making the point about how their profession has changed but their pay has not,” he said on Thursday.
He talked down the idea that the “once-in-a-generation” deal offered to paramedics will set a precedent for other sectors.
Deals have now been done to give big pay rises to paramedics and teachers. Nurses have also signed on to the government’s 4.5 per cent pay rise offer.
One of the government’s next fights will be with the Rail, Tram and Bus Union, whose award is up next year.
Expect rail workers to want a bunch more cash, too.
The government argues that they are doing exactly what they promised, by scrapping the wages cap and paying public sector workers more.
It certainly has made good on Unions NSW boss Mark Morey’s demand, on the night of the election, to pay up.
At Premier Chris Minns’s election party, he said that the government needed to “get the system back into shape so it delivers real wage increases that don’t bankrupt the state”.
All of this money (including a $3.6 billion fund to grow workers’ wages) is coming at a time when there is not much cash going around.
The half-year review of NSW’s budget, released on Tuesday, predicted we will be $3.7 billion worse off over the next four years than expected.
In 2023-24, the budget will be $1.7 billion worse off than forecast in September.
A lot of that is down to federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers who, his state counterpart says, has ripped out $1.6 billion in infrastructure spending over four years.
“That will affect the capacity of the state to deliver infrastructure for the communities that expect them,” Mookhey said on Thursday.
Mookhey warned that state government investment in the Western Sydney Airport is now at risk over a decision to pull funding from NSW.
It seems that when forced to weigh up spending on infrastructure projects with giving frontline workers a better deal, the government will prioritise wages.
That’s to be expected — at a cabinet retreat last weekend, ministers agreed that their central focus for 2024 should be on cost of living.
They do not want to get distracted.
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