On Wednesday, staff at NSW Health Pathology may have received notification from NSWHP that a retrospective payment was being made to Hospital Scientists because NSWHP had been incorrectly deducting penalty rate hours instead of ordinary hours for unpaid meal breaks. This resulted in significant underpayments and impacted over 100 employees. The issue impacted many Hospital Scientists working late afternoon shifts.

The notification sold this as a good news story because of NSWHP’s care and diligence. That is far from the truth. In fact, HSU members won this by bringing this issue to the attention of NSWHP over a year ago.

Over the past year HSU members have had to push very hard for NSWHP to fix their error.

As usual, NSWHP (a repeat player in the underpayment of wages) denied the claims and flatly refused to make the payment. Once NSWHP finally accepted they were wrong, they still tried to squirm out of paying staff what they were owed saying the situation was just swings and roundabouts.

If you think you may have been impacted but have not been notified or if you think you’ve been underpaid for any other reason, please get in touch with the HSU on 1300 478 679 as soon as possible.

Union membership is the key to employees receiving proper pay and conditions. Make sure your colleagues know that without their union these payments would never have been made.