News

Further to our Bulletin to members on 11 July 2024 and 31 July 2024, members would be aware that the VAU have been consulting with AV regarding the proposed relocation of Rural Clinicans from BalSECC, to ThoSECC. After a Conference scheduled between AV and the VAU was held in the Fair Work Commission, a 6-week consultation period was agreed upon.

Members and affected employees of the consultation group have been submitting helpful feedback to AV during this time, and we thank you all for your hard work.

Two large consultative meetings were held in this period between AV and the consultation group, where AV invited feedback from members. While members got to share feedback and outline their concerns about the proposed relocation, the VAU were disappointed that AV was unable to provide real responses or engage in alternative proposals that were put forward – they simply “listened”.

The VAU did not consider AV to be genuinely consulting with its employees, in line with Clause 12 of the Enterprise Agreement (EA) and raised concerns about this throughout, these meetings.

The formal consultation period ended on 8 September 2024, however due to the VAU’s concerns that consultation had not been acceptable or in line with the EA, we asked the Fair Work Commission to list another Conference to discuss the matter further. 

Following the Conference on 17 September 2024, a plan has been made to schedule a meeting between members and AV to properly engage in alternative proposals including roster options in order to safely staff the clinician role and keep them working from BalSECC. This meeting is now scheduled to take place on Tuesday 15 October at 9:30am at BalSECC. The VAU believes it is important that the meeting is held in Ballarat to accommodate the affected workforce, but an online link will be made available for those who need it. We have also requested that the right ‘decision makers’ from AV attend, including someone from Rosters, so the meeting is effective and efficient.

We highly encourage affected members to attend this meeting and provide advice on alternative proposals and rosters, that allow for a second clinician to be rostered on overnight in BalSECC.

We can now say that we have secured in principle agreement through the EBA process that AV will be provided funding for an extra 84.6 EFT to allow for an uplift of staff numbers in comms including CSPs, DMs and Clinicians. The process to start increasing staff numbers will take at least 6months so we need to provide options in the interim to keep our members safe whilst working in both ThoSECC and BalSECC.

The VAU are hopeful that we can resolve an option for clinician members to safely continue to work from BalSECC via this meeting. So if members could please include in any options who would/could fill the current vacant positions and how to cover the extra clinician overnight.

Please also continue to lodge any problems related to understaffing in the SECCs via our ‘report a problem’ link on the VAU website and engage with your HSRs for assistance.