Yesterday, following months of negotiations around the disputed triggering of the Infectious Cleaning Allowance, HealthShare requested that HSU members in PTS halt today’s planned action until an IRC conference could be held.

With no notice and no guarantees of a favourable outcome in the Commission, members continued with the planned action and refused to do work that they were not being paid for from 6am.

HSU delegates attended the Commission at 9:30am this morning, with the strength of this action putting enormous pressure on HealthShare to do the right thing and pay the modest infectious cleaning allowance.

How quickly HealthShare forgets that many PTOs remain anxious about contracting the virus and taking it home, yet still front up to do their bit to fight the pandemic.

Thanks to the good work of PTO delegates and members again showing the way when it comes to taking effective action, HealthShare agreed to back pay patient-facing PTOs all missed allowances for the period of July to November 2021.

In response, and as a show of good faith, delegates agreed to suspend industrial action for 7 days.

The dispute is not over though. There is another IRC conference in a week where delegates will be arguing that the infectious cleaning allowance should be paid for every shift from December 2020 and into the future. We will keep you informed of how that goes.

But for now, congratulations to HSU PTOs who have won themselves a tidy amount of back pay by standing firm.