Ross G
Organisers
estimate about 2,000 doctors and supporters attended a meeting in Brisbane on
19th March, and voted overwhelmingly to reject Government contracts (ABC News
photo)
The ongoing crisis for
capital in most of the capitalist world, including Australia, is leading to
greater pressure from governments and business leaders to wind back state
financing of public utilities as an "unproductive investment".
The Queensland LNP
government elected last year is going about this process in a methodical and
politically strategic manner. They have
learnt from the heavy handed approach which the Howard government applied that
led to its downfall.
Currently they have set
one of their sights on the public health system, which currently accounts for
27% of Queensland government expenditure.
In the context of a government campaign aimed at building public support
for transferring Qld State assets into private hands, we should question
whether the privatisation of public health assets and hospitals is being seriously
considered.
The Qld Government has
used the widely known Qld Health payroll disaster as a pretext for a sustained
assault on nurses in public hospitals.
Secretary of the Nurses
Union in Qld, Beth Mohle, said last year that "nurses and midwives are facing privatisations, out-sourcing, cutting of
positions, attacks on the Union...Not only have we lost 1100 jobs in 12 months
but there’s demotions going on everywhere. In Metro North they wrote to 3,000
experienced Grades 5 and 6, (that’s the base grade registered Nurse and
clinical Nurse) to take redundancies so that they could be replaced by
part-time, temporary new graduates [with a lower pay rate]. So they’ll save
millions of dollars each year, and have a more contingent workforce....they are
also rolling back many of the advances that were made for women in the previous
two decades, for example power has been more equally distributed within the
Health system with nursing and midwifery, and allied health and other groups
getting more power. Now the tables have been turned around, and they’re trying
to get some of that power back “(Qld Journal of Labour History, Sept,
2013).
Nurses are using their
organisation to fight back. At the Mater
Hospital in Brisbane, nurses face severe restrictions on working conditions
such as continuing professional development allowance, long service leave, and
maternity leave. The hospital bosses also want the ability to force them into
redundancy or redeployment elsewhere.
They have not received a pay rise in the past three years. They are now
campaigning to gain public support to restrict these attacks and put in place
an agreement that will restore pay rates.
Doctors in public
hospitals are also facing a determined attack on their conditions. They work for wages significantly lower than
they could gain in private practice, in order to work in "public
service". They are committed to
ensuring that patients in public hospitals receive health treatment that is
consistent with best practice, not second grade treatment.
Last year, the State Government
announced it was breaking an enterprise agreement with public hospital doctors
and would introduce statutory individual contracts. The three unions covering these doctors
attempted to negotiate a good outcome for their members, but in January this
year the State government announced it had finalised the contracts to be
offered. The contracts would strip away vital working conditions, for
example significant provisions relating to fatigue management, and allow
doctors to be dismissed at any time for no reason.
The response from the
AMA to these contracts has been a strong rejection, saying:
·
- Specialist
contracts give Government unilateral power to vary hours and pay
·
- There are
no requirement to notify or consult on roster changes, no mechanism for accrued
days off
·
- There are
no guarantees rostering will be fair and equitable
·
- Senior medical
officers (SMOs) can be arbitrarily dismissed with no unfair dismissal
provisions
·
- SMOs will
no longer have access to the Qld Industrial Relations Commission
·
- There
will be no incentive for junior doctors to train in Qld
The
Queensland Government response to this show of solidarity and strength from
doctors has not been to sit down and discuss the extraordinary passion and
commitment shown by a traditionally very conservative section of the community. Rather, the response has been to threaten
them with strike breakers, and attack their organisations.
"If
we have to recruit people from interstate or overseas, Madam Speaker, we shall
do that," Premier Campbell Newman told Queensland Parliament. "...people like ASMOFQ [Australian
Salaried Medical Officers' Federation Queensland] ... they are simply a bunch
of people who want a war, not a solution."
The
ferocity of the Qld Government attack on doctors and nurses indicates an agenda
not based on ideology, but rather on underlying economic and political
strategies essential to the major sections of capital in Queensland.
To
every action, a reaction. This attack has
united all health workers in Queensland around their ongoing struggle. It has also led to a widespread support for
these workers from workers around Queensland.
A poll conducted by the "Keep our Doctors" campaign group (see
their website) in four Queensland electorates found 68% of people support the
doctors. However, they are still pushing
ahead with individual contracts for these doctors, as they are for all higher
paid public servants – as a means of removing them from union organisation and
coverage.
The
collective response of these medical workers is an inspiration to all other
workers around Australia.
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