Paramedic pay dispute threatens NYE emergency response
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Published December 8, 2023
Sydney Morning Herald, 8 December 2023
Health Minister Ryan Park has warned that parliament may be recalled to pass emergency legislation to stop paramedics crippling the triple zero network on New Year’s Eve in an increasingly bitter industrial dispute.
The government was reeling on Friday after the Health Services Union walked out on mediation following an eleventh-hour pay offer Park described as a “once in a generation” deal that would see an average ambulance officer receive a 19 per cent pay rise.
While the government said the pay offer would make NSW paramedics among the best-paid in the country, the powerful HSU boss Gerard Hayes accused the government of lying about the details of the offer and betraying ambulance officers who helped them win election in March.
“The NSW government is attacking paramedics,” he told a fiery meeting of more than 700 union members on Friday afternoon.
“What sort of person stands in front of a person [and says] I’ll be your best friend, stand next to me [and] can some of you come to parliament and I can parade you around like a pony, and then try and shoot you.
“We are going to stare this down, and the community of NSW will be with us.”
The government, however, insists the pay offer is in line with HSU demands that NSW pay match what paramedics earn in Queensland, and is furious the union has walked away from the bargaining table.
“I am bitterly disappointed that this offer has been rejected,” Park said.
“This is what the union asked for. This offer is a once in a generation offer the likes that paramedics have never seen before.”
The breakdown in negotiations means the dispute will now be negotiated by the Industrial Relations Commission, with Park saying the parties expected to work over the weekend to break the impasse.
But with thousands of paramedics threatening not to renew their registrations by the end of the year, he did not rule out taking the dramatic step of recalling parliament from its summer break to pass legislation to break the deadlock.
Without registration, paramedics cannot legally attend triple zero calls, and with the grace period expiring on New Year’s Eve, and the industrial relation action could shut down the emergency response system on the busiest night of the year.
“If this means that triple zero collapses on January 1,” Park said. “It will be a disaster for the people of NSW, and it will be vulnerable people who will suffer the most.”
Park would not go into detail on what that legislation might look like, but said it could change rules to allow paramedics to work without registration.
“We’re certainly not at that point at the moment, but we are working on a range of different contingencies around that, and we will, depending on how we go over the course of the next few days, continue to update the community going forward,” he said.
The government said the offer – made on Thursday night before a crisis meeting between Treasurer Daniel Mookhey, Park and Hayes on Friday – would see first-year paramedic pay increase by 11.4 per cent by July 2026. A sixth-year paramedic would receive a 25.8 per cent pay bump over the same period, government officials said.
Senior union officials disputed those numbers because the government’s figures were based on a paramedic’s take home pay, which includes penalties for overtime and allowances.
Unions NSW secretary Mark Morey pointed out that under the government’s figures, the difference between base pay and “take home” pay for a first-year paramedic was about $54,800.
“Who gets more than $50,000 in allowances every year?” he said.
But a government spokesperson said the figures were based on an estimate of four-hours overtime per week, less than the average worked by a paramedic.
The Herald revealed last Friday that one in 12 NSW Ambulance employees has, or has had, a WorkCover claim for a psychological injury in the past two years, with those on the road saying it is the “guilt of patients dying” due to “an overburdened health system” that is making them sick.
The union said that more than 600 paramedics had taken up positions interstate in the last six months, such were the pay conditions in NSW, adding that 20 per cent of NSW paramedics receive a compensable injury every year. Queensland’s paramedics have an injury rate of 7 per cent, while all worker injuries, across all industries, average to 1.8 per cent of the workforce.