News

Members who are former and current employees of Wilson Medic One (WMO) will be aware that they had been conducting a review of employees’ wages and conditions due to a lack of compliance with the Ambulance and Patient Transport Industry Award 2010 (the Award). Following the commencement of that review the Victorian Ambulance Union Incorporated (VAU) has been working tirelessly to ensure that every member entitled to backpay receives it.

After several delays and an extended waiting period, payments have finally begun to be received by members. However, these payments have largely only been made to PTOs.  ATAs who had expected to also receive some back pay have not, and the VAU believe WMO may be relying on incorrect information regarding their entitlements.

Why have ATAs not received back-payments? 

WMO is claiming that in most cases ATAs received a higher hourly rate of pay than the Award rates of pay and therefore believe they can set-off this higher hourly rate of pay against any other overtime, penalties or allowances which is otherwise owed to these employees. It is the VAU’s preliminary view that WMO cannot set-off overpayments against over-award payments unless there is a clause within your contract of employment expressly allowing them to do so.

Next Steps 

For the VAU to follow up with these underpayment claims, we need affected members to provide us with copies of your contract of employment, timesheets and payslips.

We also ask that members request that WMO provide you with the wage audit that they claim they have completed for you in relation to your wages. Once you have received a copy, we also ask that you send this to the VAU.

This is an important part of the process necessary to recover lost entitlements for all eligible WMO members as this will enable the VAU to further assess the claim.

You can send this relevant information to:

• [email protected],
• [email protected].au, or
• [email protected].au.

If you could please use ‘WMO BACKPAY’ as the subject line in your email to us, in order to prioritise your matter.

In Solidarity