MP in the firing line

By Paul Pickering
FOOTHILLS nurses and health-care workers fear their penalty rates will be taken away what they say is a Howard Government plan to impose WorkChoices legislation on a further 1.5 million employees.
A group of local health workers joined members of the La Trobe Your Rights at Work campaign and Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Jeff Lawrence outside La Trobe MP Jason Wood’s office in Boronia last Thursday, seeking reassurance from Mr Wood about the safety of their penalty rates.
Mr Lawrence said that the Government’s plan to take control of public hospitals was a way of pushing nurses and other health care professionals onto wage-cutting job contracts.
Boronia resident and psychiatric nurse Sarah, who asked for her surname to be omitted, said that that nurses were becoming increasingly frustrated by pay negotiations.
“The Federal Government is asking the ANF (Australian Nursing Federation) not to negotiate for us. We need to be in a union to be protected because we have no protection at all with WorkChoices,” she said.
Sarah said she could not afford to lose her penalty rates.
“I cannot survive without them and if they were taken away I would get a third of my pay gone,” she explained.
Mr Lawrence said the Boronia demonstration was part of a nationwide attempt to inform voters of the Government’s intentions to push WorkChoices into hospitals and thousands of other workplaces.
“Today nurses and health care workers are sending a message to Mr Howard and Mr Costello that their pay and conditions are not up for grabs in this election,” he said.
While Mr Wood was not present at his office during the demonstration, he later said: “The nurses union should focus on the people that are not looking after them, which is the State Government.”