News
9th June, 2022
Healthcare Worker Winter Retention Payment
The Victorian Ambulance Union (VAU) welcomes the Victorian Government Winter Retention Payment, but ensuring retention of our health workforce will be a long term challenge we need to deal with.
The Victorian Ambulance Union (VAU) welcomes the Victorian Government Winter Retention Payment that recognises the strain placed on our members working during the health crisis and to incentivise members returning to work.
The strain on the system is seeing health services risk haemorrhaging staff to the private sector, other states and to other industries. The purpose of this retention payment is to retain staff in Victorian health services where they are vitally needed to provide treatment of Victorian patients during this period of high workload.
Initiatives aimed at retaining staff in AV and public hospitals are vitally important to keep members engaged where they are needed the most.
This is a positive first step, but ensuring retention of our health workforce will be a long term challenge we need to deal with. Burnout and fatigue amongst our members has never been higher and morale is rock bottom. So we risk losing a lot of paramedics and ambulance workers.
The VAU will be writing to private sector employers to call on them to match the payment or to consider other retention options for their own employees. Private sector patient transport ambos have been at the forefront of the pandemic effort and their employers should be recognising their efforts in the same way as the public sector has.