Royal Hobart Hospital pharmacists owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in entitlements, union says

Some workers at the Royal Hobart Hospital are owed thousands of dollars in unpaid entitlements, which are still yet to be paid back despite the government being aware of the issue for two years. DETAILS >

HACSU assistant secretary Robbie Moore. Picture: Chris Kidd

The state government is believed to owe hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid entitlements to pharmacists working at the Royal Hobart Hospital, despite the issue coming to light nearly two years ago.

The Health and Community Services Union (HACSU) has labelled the underpayment fiasco “wage theft” and says about 40 pharmacy shift workers at the RHH were each owed between $10,000 and $30,000 after not being sufficiently remunerated for paid meal breaks and leave entitlements between July 2019 and March 2021.

The Health Department says it has moved to fix the problem, which it says was the result of paid meal break entitlements being “inadvertently omitted” for “some employees”.

HACSU Tasmania assistant secretary Robbie Moore said there were “a couple of outliers” among the affected pharmacists who were allegedly underpaid for five years and were each likely to be owed “around $100,000”.

HACSU assistant secretary Robbie Moore. Picture: Chris Kidd

“This is wage theft because [the department has] known about it for this long,” he said. “To knowingly have not paid people and every day that that goes on, that is workers being denied their own money. It is stolen wages.”

Mr Moore said the union was trying to resolve the matter with the department but was considering escalating the issue to the Industrial Commission.

“[The department has] acknowledged that they’ve done the wrong thing but it’s just dragging out in terms of [staff] getting the money and people are obviously very angry about it.

“They’ve fixed the issue currently but they haven’t paid the amounts they owe. And these are allied health professionals who we’re struggling to keep in Tasmania. There’s a heap of vacancies in the pharmacy at the Royal Hobart Hospital.”

An anonymous whistleblower who used to work at the hospital claimed pharmacy staff relocating to the RHH from the Launceston General Hospital and the North West Regional Hospital had first drawn attention to the underpayment problem in 2019.

Royal Hobart Hospital.

“However, these staff were ignored and told that they weren’t entitled to those payments set out in the award,” the whistleblower told the Sunday Tasmanian.

“Staff morale is so low, with a large proportion of level 1-2 pharmacists leaving in the past two years due to the horrendous work conditions, hours and the lack of responsibility of the State Service in righting their wrongs and remedying the wage theft in an appropriate time-frame.”

A Health Department spokesman said a review of employment records was under way, which would “determine the value of any underpayments and any unpaid entitlements will be paid as soon as they are quantified”.

“The process requires significant consideration of employment records, including contracts and timesheets across a prolonged period,” he said.

The spokesman said some employees may also have been affected by an “over-accrual” of recreation leave.