Heard this over on the train - what do people think about this?
Personally I'm half half
Yeah though i sort of think like if you did well in a private sector you would get a bonus- so similar>?
Define do well?
And why only them? Cops putting up with frankly nutbags for 2 years, teachers dealing with flip flopping education, public service still chronically understaffed (just ask the Passport Office).
Sick of giving away taxpayer hand outs that are only there for headline grabs and yet wages aren't moving in real terms at all.
Weren’t you a nurse at one point before you arc’d up at that junkie and got fired? Tough break but better than working in ED with all these covid patients coming in.
Complaining about your job being too hard when most people didn't even have a job anymore is just the height of self absorption.
Like having to work with women?
I don't mind working with women. I met one of my past gf's at work.
When those women exhibit toxic behaviour and force their humbled attitudes onto everyone's work, yeah it becomes a problem, just like when (male) assholes perform similar antics at the office.
It's almost as if some people can make your job less pleasant no matter what sex they are.
The government spent tens of billions of dollars on Jobseeker and Jobkeeper so those who lost their job still had decent levels of pay and could sit at home doing nothing while collecting it.
I'm sure plenty of nurses and doctors if, given the choice, would have preferred to sit at home on jobkeeper than go work in a hospital during a pandemic.
$1250 a fortnight is chump change for the inflated prices the government is responsible for. While it was a rort and actively punished people who worked, it's hardly reasonable when you stopped business owners or contractors from making what they'd usually pocket. Some of those businesses shut down and never reopened, because global suppliers don't care about COVID. If you can't fulfill orders, they'll cancel their contract and find someone India or Philipines to do it instead.
That's not a problem you can solve with fortnightly hush money that barely covers someone's rent. The majority of people were completely screwed by the government. "Were all in this together" say the guys who took your job and gave themselves a pay rise.
@SlavOz: Replying to you is like a lotto on weird angry anti-lockdown stuff, regardless of what the question was.
Don't forgot some tradies who pocketed the money and took on cash jobs.
Exactly this.Almost everyone had stability in pay thanks to jobkeeper payments ( in some cases a huge payrise thanks to a loophole) and were paid to stay home….yep,it was so tough for those who got to sit watching Netflix and get paid, and then later get towork from home.We worked right in the epicentre of it all ( with no vaccine and little PPE ).My husband also works in the hospital system, and we would only half joke about who was bringing it home first.
I say give them some perspective. Complaining about your job being too hard when most people didn't even have a job anymore is just the height of self absorption.
You know we are at 3.9% unemployment?
A few more facts are probably required before you made this post OP. Less speculation, more facts please.
1. The Victorian and NSW state governments announced they would give a 3k bonus to healthcare workers. NSW announced this 4 days ago, Victoria announced it today.
2. In NSW the announcement comes after significant campaigning by healthcare workers to remove the wage gap and negotiate for better pay
3. The Federal election doesn't have much to do with this, as it is the states who have decided this. NSW has elections next year, Victoria has them in November this year.
4. The Victorian government already offered an 'allowance' of up to $60 per shift since October last year, throughout surge periods.
My thoughts:
1. Not entirely sure what is 'stable' about the role they had. The physical and emotional toll the pandemic has had on healthcare workers in our major states is indescribable.
2. These people carried our states, our healthcare systems and our livelihoods over the last few months, while we basically forgot the pandemic existed. They sacrificed themselves so that we could 'live freely' or whatever.
3. If you care about healthcare at all, then yes, respecting and acknowledging the work our healthcare workers do and have done is important and worthy.
Well said, OP must have only heard the headline and not the story.
Not entirely sure what is 'stable' about the role they had
They didn't get fired because their employer has unlimited money. Most people weren't that fortunate and lost their job.
They sacrificed themselves so that we could 'live freely' or whatever.
Get your face out of their ass. They were doing what we pay them to do. At no point is nursing ever sold as some casual gig where you don't expect bad things to happen. Dealing with sick patients in a busy environment is the core of the role. Many women go into this field because they find fulfilment in aiding those in need.
They're employees who suddenly found themselves busier than usual. That doesn't make them Christ on the cross.
If you care about healthcare at all, then yes, respecting and acknowledging the work
Can say this about every industry. If the garbies didn't collect your rubbish every week, we'd be living in filth and plagues. If the truckies didn't drive, we'd all starve to death as the food wouldn't reach our shelves. If the Web developers stopped working, government websites would go down and people wouldn't have access to essential information or services.
Should we give them all a raise too? Everyone did their part during the pandemic to keep society functional. That's the luxury of capitalism. But simplifying it down to one layer of thought that it was all just the bravery of our nurses is just silly media pandering.
I rather wish the 3k goes into providing more hospital and the facilities.. something that benefit public
No point in having a shiny new hospital with no doctors and nurses to work in it.
Its really interesting as I feel people see the $3k bonus and they see it like they got bestowed extra money, but I don't think its that.
In NSW at least, as far as I understand, 2020 they took an increase of 0.3% due to CPI during the height of the pandemic. I think in 2021 they took a 2% increase when CPI was 3.5%. So they've been essentially getting a "pay cut" compared with CPI each year.
This year CPI I think is like 5.1% at the moment, but I doubt they'll get that also. Because instead of increasing wage to CPI (which then increases future wage by percentage) they give a $3K bonus instead and then provide a smaller increase so that the overall wage in the future is lower (essentially behind CPI for future years plus already behind from 2020/2021).
Or essentially I imagine most health care workers would prefer not to get the $3K, and instead for their pay to increase aligned with CPI as they'd get more I think.
*I will note this is just a basic understanding of how I have it, I could be very wrong or the numbers could be wrong. But I thought its worth putting it across.
You are correct. Vic gov has a 2% wage rise cap - This applies to hospital staff aswell.
The last payrise they received was in October 2019, 3%.
No payrise in 2020.
2% payrise in 2021-2025.
To make it worse, some healthworkers (allied health, admin, techs, cleaners, cooks etc) only receive a 1% payrise in 2021 as the payrises are skewed towards the later years.
https://www.vhia.com.au/wp-content/uploads/Bul-2722-Attachme…
Page 247 lists the pay and rises.
It's all public information.
My problem is it shouldn't be a bonus. They ought to have a proper pay rise.
But you see, an additional 1-2% offering in a negotiation doesn't grab headlines and there's no virtue signal to be gained.
Make it a bonus and suddenly emotions are involved.
Not that I don't appreciate health care workers but during Covid, retail workers (and other "essential" workers) continued to earn low wages selling alcohol and groceries to people. Actually forced to be at a highers risk of getting covid and having little choice and no strong union representation to push for any additional pay or conditions in the workplace. So when I see that certain "essential" workers would get a financial gift from Gov, this just seems so unfair.
Yep, I was forced to be at work because “essential services” and I didn’t have the training or the facilities to back me up like dedicated hospital workers.
And I agree, there were a lot of workers out there that were forced to go to work who where well way more under equipped for dealing with a pandemic who are already on a lot less than nurses but somehow seem to have just been swept under a rug because it’s probably better to be seen giving money to nurses than it is to bottle shop clerks.
I thought essential workers was code for sacrificial lambs. Coming from another essential worker but a keyboard jockey.
DIfference is who pays them. The states can't pay out to all essential workers because they're not on the state payroll, whereas hospital workers got the worst of it and are on that payroll.
I think it's important to recognise that while it's unfair, the solution isn't to take away pay from hospital workers who went through hell during covid. It should have been that salaries were increased during covid times for all essential workers and there should have basically been danger pay for all of those workers. But that's a federal issue, not a state one.
True don't take away pay ofcourse. But do hand out bonuses etc fairly and recognise what others did without any additional penalties or payments at all.
Shouldnt be just for hospital staff, loads of local community health centers picked up a lot of the testing and 'treatment' of patients when the hospitals where over-run they should get some recognition too
but fair play to Andrews for this im not a fan of Dan but at least he is doing the right thing here
All other government employees are shafted as their pay packets go backwards. Even then the $3k bonus is probably equivalent to a one off 5% pay rise, so basically inflation.
I worked at a hospital in Victoria, halfway during covid the majority of nurses refused to work their casual shifts beause the government announced the hospital had to pay them their average wage anyway - so the hospital I was at struggled for staff and stressed the ones that did go to work much more - so sure give 3k, but only to those who didn't deliberatly milk the system at others expense
No public servants should be getting any increase, they are all very very well paid already. Especially in WA.
And no we should not be giving any more money to low income families, they are already receiving so much from Centrelink (aka taxpayers).
Especially in WA.
Paid more than those working in the mines?
Ha no.
WA public servants have been getting a $1,000 capped pay rise no matter your wage for the last decade, in terms of inflation thats going backwards (unless you're on less than $50k a year. While mining has gone from strength to strength.
The biggest issue with WA is that they've lost so many decent professionals to mining because of this as the wages have gone backwards and now they're left with a large number of dropkicks. Pay peanuts, get monkeys.
WA public servants have been getting a $1,000 capped pay rise no matter your wage for the last decade, in terms of inflation thats going backwards (unless you're on less than $50k a year. While mining has gone from strength to strength.
There is and should be zero relationship between mining wages and public sector wages.
Just because one portion of the private sector grows does not translate to public sector wages growing in unison.
You try to employ an engineer or professional with that attitude and you'll find the public service capitulate in no time
@Drakesy: I have worked in the WA public service twice in two separate departments (eg Dept of Mines and Petroleum before name change).
The younger engineers / technical staff tend to work there to get experience and get paid very well at the junior levels but when they get the necessary experience public service cannot compete.
@tsunamisurfer: Agreed,
Senior engineer experience in the public service is severely lacking, and i believe, is largely responsible for so many government run projects being a shambles.
They bring in cheaper un-qualified project managers into engineer roles and wonder why the project goes tits up.
It's heinously inefficient.
Then they spend 200% of the original wage to bring in an engineer from a consulting house to clean up the mess when they could've just paid more from the start.
If you're a junior engineer in the public sector my advice would be to get out asap and get some proper site experience.
Geez, who voted for no bonus? Stress and safety risk increased dramatically during covid. And dealing with the general public can be painful.
As trustnoone said, we were getting a "paycut" when our yearly CPI raises were paused by the government for some bizarre reason that I'm not aware of, so I'm glad for the $3k and lifted rates. These past two years and counting have been torture for healthcare workers.
In saying that, so many other government employees worked through this pandemic to support the country who are not getting anything. I certainly couldn't have made it through without these other people being there to help, so it feels completely unfair. Even within the healthcare system, there are people who had to work much harder than me who are now getting the same amount of thanks. One size fits all approaches are never fair in the end, though I don't have any idea what would be fair
Give them a pay rise.
Holy shit, lots of "Errr I didn't get a bonus so why should they" in here.
Yes, it shouldn't just be restricted to healthcare workers but the public healthcare system is one industry that the state governments have direct control over through wages and bonuses like this.
You can't collect tax revenue in future if half the population have poor health outcomes.
Public healthcare and public education are✌️ industries that are worth protecting.
The other industries should be left to fend for themselves.
Given work load on the health care system (COVID hasn't gone away, just the restrictions have) more staff would probably be better than a drop of cash (but appreciate it is better than nothing).
There should simply be a 'no because it was there job'. Are they going to give every front line and public service employee a bonus?
Hypocritical when they can't even secure a half decent pay rise.