2024 - 2027 Paramedic/Ambulance Officer EBA Negotiations

Meeting Chaired By
Carly Rees.

Meeting Conducted
09-00 – 12:00.

Committee Attendees
John Thomas, Mike Hardwick, Lee Waller, Dave Higgins, Conrad Fairhead, Callan McClure, Gary Davies, Dave Bryant, Rick Candy, Shannan Bradley, Paul Davies, and Justin Ingrey.

Committee Apologies
Kirsty Roberts.

SJA Attendees
Carly Rees, and Stephanie Freemantle.

The AEAWA EBA bargaining team met with St John today for a short 2.5 hour meeting. This meeting resulted in the AEAWA negotiation team reaching REAP Level 3 (Re-negotiating Enterprise Agreement Pain).

This meeting was originally scheduled to be a ‘full day’ with the negotiation team keen to get on with detailed and productive bargaining. Alas, the meeting length was again shortened to just 3 hours, with agenda items being covered in just over 2 hours. A very short and unproductive day. Again, this meeting was predominantly geared towards bargaining groups providing additional detail and clarity to St John. This really could have been done 6 weeks ago, and we would be 6 weeks closer to a bargaining outcome.
For those attempting to sleep, please read on.

Agenda Items

Clarity was provided on the claims below.

AEAWA to provide clarity on inconsistencies between access to overtime. Members have raised concerns about equitable access to overtime. This issue is compounded by the organisation’s increasing reliance on ICB to fill vacancies. Many employees who have family or child-care commitments to work around on their rostered days off feel disadvantaged as they are unable to work short notice ICBs. The overtime calendar system has fallen into complete disuse, and the overtime distribution policy is ignored. We are seeking St John’s commitment to develop an app or website during the first 18 months of the new agreement showing live roster vacancies, with OT able to be booked in advance. This will help our members plan their days off and ensure family commitments can be satisfied. It will also reduce risks of fatigue, with employees better able to sleep/prepare before night shift OT.

AEAWA to provide the number of shifts required per year to achieve progression milestones. The AEAWA propose that the wording around paramedic progression be clarified.

Currently, to progress from SAO or Paramedic Intern to AP you are required to complete a set number of clinical operational shifts. Due to the initial wording in the Agreement being poorly constructed, this mechanism was not extended to Paramedic progression. The failure to extend this formality has had unintended consequences in situations where St John advertises roles that require an amount of clinical experience for specific roles (i.e. AP2 for CCP). The current wording takes no account of clinical operational shifts completed, in progressing from AP1 to AP2, which is linked purely to years employed, rather than the number of operational clinical shifts completed. This could mean for instance that an AP1 may spend 2+ years on Worker’s Compensation and perform no clinical shifts, but have this time counted towards progression to AP2. That was not the intended purpose, and it therefore makes no sense then to have minimum role requirements of AP2 for instance as is required for CCP or CP.

Working with a Medic
Remove reference to training (AEAWA to clarify intent). The AEAWA want consistency of wording in the Agreement. The term ‘tutor’ or ‘tutoring’ exists in the Agreement and that is the preferred wording as it distinguishes the role performed from ‘mentoring’ and also attracts the On-Road Tutor allowance. St John would argue that training or mentoring is part of registration and so employees could be forced into these roles without remuneration.

Introduce a new clause ensuring maximum opportunities for all employees to gain experience and develop their careers in relation to various secondments and pools.

Our members have raised concerns that they are not given fair and equitable access to different roles within the organisation as many of these positions are filled by a relatively small group of employees who may occupy 4 or 5 different pools.

As an example, a significant number of substantive (permanent) Area Managers have successfully applied for pool ORM roles, thereby limiting opportunities for other on-road staff to gain experience. It is not unusual for select employees to be in not only the HLM pool but also the AM pool, the ORM pool and the CSP pool all at once. There is a general lack of governance and transparency over entrance to, and timeframes involved in many clinical pools, as well as the operation of STT and APTC pools (if indeed they are pools), and college roles appear to again be a closed shop with many secondments moving between roles that are rarely advertised.

In addition, some successful pool candidates appear to enjoy endless extensions in their pools or move seamlessly into other similar roles without due process. The ‘tap on the shoulder’ system is undoubtedly cheaper for St John, but this limits opportunities for other employees to experience new roles.

Having a small proportion of employees monopolising limited opportunities is unfair to the wider workforce; a workforce which undoubtedly contains many more talented and capable employees than are represented in the current pool membership. We seek to introduce a clause with provides better equity, fairness and transparency, for the benefit of the whole workforce. Our view is that employees should occupy no more than two pool positions simultaneously. This, we hope, will force St John to engage a larger and more diverse range of candidates.

Clarify and restrict the permissible deployment of single officers between country and metro.
St John has a very stringent recruitment process in place to ensure metro officers applying for country positions are suitable to work in country locations. Prospective candidates for country locations have to undergo rigorous panel interviews, psychometric testing, assessment centres etc. All this goes out the window when ‘operational requirements’ suddenly change, such as when an officer becomes spare/single at Mandurah or Secret Harbour, in which case SOC can happily send the officer to work with volunteers in Pinjarra or Dawesville. No psychometric testing is required. While we have long campaigned against the overly complex and lengthy (personality-based) country recruitment process, we strongly believe that metro and country are separate employment locations and St John should not be able to transfer you as ‘operationally required’.

Introduce retention bonus payable after each 12 months continuous service (excl annual leave) (difficult to fill county locations only).
Discussion occurred around ‘how to establish what is a difficult to location’. The AEAWA believe this should be self-evident, once the recruitment process has failed to attract applicants or find suitable candidates that it is difficult to fill. In terms of the monetary value of the retention bonus, this needs to be sufficient to attract candidates but the amount may be different for each location i.e. it may (for instance) be a $15,000 bonus for completion of 12 months in Kalgoorlie, or $30,000 per completed 12 months in Newman.

New clause restricting dynamic deployment locations to depots only.
Crews who are dynamically deployed must be returned to the shift start location, by the end of the rostered shift.

The AEAWA are aware that as St John preferences Hub model over new depots, and continues to struggle to meet demand, it is leaning more heavily upon dynamic deployment. Officers may live in Scarborough, get rostered to Cowcher Depot, then dynamically deployed to Mandurah, whereupon they struggle to get back to their starting depot towards the end of their shift. We need to put restrictions in place that protect members from unreasonable shift extensions, which are incurred because of poor infrastructure planning and staffing levels.

Remote Location Allowance – Sliding scale for current and future locations.
The AEAWA highlighted the inconsistencies in the Agreement whereby Norseman attracts the remote location allowance, but Esperance does not even though you have to drive through Norseman and continue driving a further 200km to get to Esperance.

Add minimum EMA standard (Working with Volunteers)
The AEAWA want to see the minimum volunteer qualification to be ‘EMA’ should a paramedic at a hybrid location be required to work with the volunteer.

Define a Country Crew
The AEAWA negotiating team seek to introduce a Country Crew Formation clause. Currently, the only provision which touches upon crew formation in country locations is 22(c) ‘Working with volunteers’. We want to see the introduction of a Country Crew Formation clause, similar to the Metropolitan Crew Formation clause the AEAWA successfully introduced at the last EBA. This clause would help codify accepted crew configuration and restrict the use of ad-hoc classifications to work in country locations.

CCP claims
Several CCP claims were explored with the rationale being provided by CCP delegates from the AEAWA due to the specialised nature of these claims. Claims discussed/clarified were clauses to create a permanent CCP classification for on-road CCP, travel allowances to Jandakot airport/Belmont CCP base, flight allowances, rescue crewman allowance, CCP Lead positions, TPD and life insurance due to the difficulty obtaining affordable insurance on the helicopter, Deployment allowance for any deployment for all classifications AP, CCP, ECP etc.

Meeting Closed
11:30

Next Meeting
09-00 – 16:00 Monday 13th April 2024. St John indicated that this is likely to be a full day meeting designed at. As usual, we will do our best to keep you informed.

Meeting Chaired By
Carly Rees.

Meeting Conducted
09-00 – 12:00.

Committee Attendees
John Thomas, Mike Hardwick, Lee Waller, Dave Higgins, Conrad Fairhead, Callan McClure, Gary Davies, Dave Bryant, Rick Candy, Shannan Bradley, and Justin Ingrey.

Committee Apologies
Kirsty Roberts and Paul Davies.

SJA Attendees
Carly Rees, Karen Stewart, Joe Cuthbertson, and Stephanie Freemantle.

Terms of Reference
Today’s meeting was just to provide detail to the log of claims presented at the last meeting.

The EBA negotiation team met briefly with St John this morning, primarily to clarify the intent and proposed operation of some AEAWA claims so that St John can assess and cost.
St John also provided an update on the NW Claims and presented a new claim in relation to Clause 22 of the Agreement ‘Working With Volunteers’. Below we have outlined the main topics clarified.

Updates

Northwest Duties Allowance
St John indicated that they plan to hold consultation and discussions with North West Employees and AEAWA representatives to try and understand what a replacement for the NW Allowance should look like. St John are aware that the current allowance is not fit for purpose.

Emergency Transformation Update
The project team is seeking feedback and are reviewing the future design of this program. St John would like to have the leaders of the program come in to brief the Paramedic EBA bargaining team. There should be an overview and discussions occurring next EBA meeting.

Introduction of New Claims
St John stated that there was a clause missed off the claim. This claim was Working With Volunteers (current Clause 22 – Working With Volunteers). St John want to change section (c) which means that they can change the crew formation.

The AEAWA stated that there is zero trust in St John Country Management, and these new plans will be rolled out across the State, therefore we cannot agree to change this wording.

St John New Claim
SJA sought to introduce a new claim in relation to Working With Volunteers. SJA wish to amend the 22(c) of the EBA which currently reads:

The standard crew at a Country Location, will be as determined by St John and will generally consist of one employee and one clinical volunteer ambulance officer, with the exception of Bunbury Station, where St John retains the ability, with the agreement of the employee, to form a crew with a clinical volunteer ambulance officer.

SJA’s intent is to allow rostering Bunbury employees with volunteers in certain emergency instances such as “emergency road crash response”.

The AEAWA today voiced our outright rejection of this proposal. History has repeatedly shown us that should SJA be given an avenue to reduce funding additional paramedics in regional areas, they will exploit at every opportunity. The ability of the organisation to pair Paramedics with volunteers (especially in highly populated urban areas, which should be 100% paramedic staffed), will be a regressive step for the ambulance service, and damage efforts to promote the rollout of more registered paramedics to regional areas.

The clause as it stands is sufficient. In the event of a multi casualty event, Paramedics in the Bunbury area would work with volunteer crews to naturally form crew configurations which would maximise patient care.

Agenda Items

Secondments
UWU want to have the CP roles moved to 5-year secondments, and if you are still in the position after that time frame, you take the roll permanently.

Night Shift Payment
The AEAWA clarified intent of night shift payment for full shift overtime. The intent is to encourage and attract employee to complete night shift overtime.
Currently there is minimal financial difference between a 12-hour OT day shift and a 13-hour OT night shift.

In terms of raw hours there is no incentive to choose a night shift. The financial difference was further reduced by the move away from 10/14 shifts. This issue was highlighted at the last negotiation but at that time SJA refused to extend the night shift payment to overtime shifts.

The organisations increasing dependence on triple time will hopefully mean they can now see the value in having a genuine financial incentive for those working nights.

Spare Officers
The AEAWA clarified the intention of several proposed claims in relation to Spare Officers, to reduce the overall reliance on spare officers and to increase fairness. SJA were advised that there are too many spares on the roster, most likely this is to compensate for deficiencies in rostering.

Spare officers are undertaking excess travel, are being routinely contacted outside of work hours and are then expected to act upon instructions to attend depots a long way from their home.

Spare officers generally experience more fatiguing shift extensions than rostered officers and are more vulnerable to workplace stress due to not having a regular work partner. Spare Officers have added uncertainty at work, with no consistent work partner who can share in, and monitor wellbeing and exposure to traumatic events.

On Call Allowance
The AEAWA clarified that this requires review for all positions which may be eligible. The On Call Allowance is currently calculated (randomly) at 0.5% of a Student Ambulance Officer – Operations base rate, regardless of position being worked (i.e. PSO/CCP/AP).

This allowance (currently $5.76 per hour) is insufficient if expecting employees to effectively put their lives on hold while on call.

CCP On-Call Deployment Roster Payment
The AEAWA wanted to know how St John established the $5.76 hourly rate paid to CCPs. SJA will return with that answer at the next meeting.

Personal Leave Balance Exchange
The AEAWA provided clarification on the intent of this clause. We propose a mechanism to exchange surplus Personal (Sick) Leave balances for Special Leave at a 2:1 ratio, where an employee holds a balance over (initially proposed) 336 hours of Personal (Sick) Leave.
This would allow employees to better manage their fatigue, and also give SJA up to 3 months’ notice of an employee’s intent not to be at work.

A similar system already exists in reverse where employees who have depleted sick leave are able to convert special leave and annual leave into sick leave.

Redraft of Allocated Position Clauses
Clear understanding within the Agreement, there are multiple policies at the moment that create confusion.

High Call Volume Allowance
SJA wanted clarification of the intent of this claim. The AEAWA recognise that certain depots and indeed certain call-signs experience a disproportionately high workload and minimal down time. These depots are difficult to fill with long term permanent staff because they are consistently (brutally) busy.

The AEAWA wish to open a discussion as to what an allowance or penalty might look like for such depots/call signs, but we will require data from St John which illustrates current workloads by depot/call sign to determine an appropriate penalty. We have suggested this allowance be known as the Pineapple Penalty.

Country Retention Allowance
The AEAWA propose that incentives need to be put in place to attract and retain employees to difficult to fill country locations. The current system is not working with a heavy reliance on country relief. For many new locations, the current relief allowances often do not prove attractive.

Meeting Closed
10:50.

Next Meeting
09-00 – 12:00 Monday 29th April 2024. St John indicated that this is likely to be another short meeting designed at clarifying further clauses. As usual, we will do our best to keep you informed.

Meeting Chaired By
Carly Rees.

Meeting Conducted
15:00.

Committee Attendees
John Thomas, Mike Hardwick, Lee Waller, Dave Higgins, Conrad Fairhead, Callan McClure, Rick Candy, and Shannan Bradley.

Committee Apologies
Kirsty Roberts and Paul Davies.

SJA Attendees
Carly Rees, Joel Moore, Joe Cuthbertson, and Stephanie Freemantle.

Terms of Reference
Today’s meeting was just to present the Log of Claims.

St John Agenda
– St John are seeking a 3 year Agreement.
– St John recognise there needs to be wage increases, though obviously this will depend on allowances and other costs incurred through negotiations.
– St John have no ‘starting position’ in relation to a wage offer.
– St John informed parties that many legislative changes will need to be included St John intend to amend CPHC definition to align with new department name, and amend definition of ‘Employee’. Amend superannuation.
– Ammend A/L to ensure is accruable on Workers Compensation in accordance with legislation.
– Family and domestic violence updated to reflect legislative change
– Amend on call allowance to align with figure in appendix.
– 9.29(d) remove amend 20% non clinical component of CEP due to increased need for non clinical training.
– Creating a HAD for clinical education trainers to ensure equitable pay across the classification to ensure equitable ‘pay bump’ for AP1 – AP3. Possibly a percentage bump or a flat rate allowance on top of base salary.

Introduction of New or Alternative Roster Arrangements to Provide Greater Options.
– St John like to explore an option of Day/Day/Late/Night. 7-7 9-9 / 10/10/ 12/12.
– St John not sure how that would fit in with existing shift colours.
– St John suggest one option might be to move some day vehicles, some 244 to this new roster.
– St John believe might be able to keep pay and annual leave as currently is.
– St John open to discuss other options.
– Will need to bring in 8 shift colours.
– Comparatively to process in ACT.
– Will have to examine effects on part time, job share etc
– Relief to be offered to local paramedics in the first instance.
– Special Services remove clause linking to DFES and health contracts.
– Remove wording ‘posting’ and replace with ‘secondments’.
– Secondments to be capped at 5 years tenure.
– Progression, updating clause to reflect amendments with medic pathway etc (consistency) Allowances
– Amend 19.23 to would like to provide country relief accommodation, rather than being optional.

– Discussion as to what is ‘reasonable’ accommodation?
– Possibly this is plan to secure longer term suitable accommodation, more reasonably.
– NW allowance – to amend the allowance to better compensate for cost of living, not so much compensation for OT and training etc. SJA believe the NW allowance is no longer fit for purpose. Separate the allowance to no longer be ‘rolled up’ to clearly understand what is covered and for what purpose.
– Extend training requirements as per NW allowance to Goldfields area.
– Proximity allowance, Increase distances from 15km to 25km
– 16.4 Reflect that employees will be eligible for travel / flights allowance once they are ready to deploy.

– Paramedic Log of Claims presented by Lee Waller (see linked LOC)
– PSO Log of Claims presented by Conrad Fairhead
– NW Allowance Log of Claims presented by Shannan Bradley

UWU Claim
– 10% per annum, one off 3% payment
– Overtime to be paid in period it is worked
– Other Maxxia Salary Sacrifice providers
– Support 224 roster
– Support filling 224
– Shadow rostering
– Night shift to be scaled by rank. Flat allowance, inequity to be resolved OH additional $100
– Fatigue – double time from meal break broken.
– Increase Triple time shift extension
– 10 hours break between shifts
– Automatic takeover crews
– No non emergency transfers after midnight
– No outbound RFDS within last hour.
– Mandatory out of service for last half hour unless P1/P0
– Resource allocation – disparity between north and south. SJA to resource south more effectively.
– Meal break night to be extended to 45 minutes,
– Meal break not to be allocated to crew on the dot at multi crew depot.

Country Resourcing
– increase pay, training and scope, appropriate staffing (AP2 and opposed to DE AP2), facilitating family visiting, ability to visit family.
– Airfares and travel to visit family to be fully reimbursed
– Undesirable location allowance
– No owing of days when moving between metro and country
– Better posting conditions
– Increase in permanent allowances
– Relief incentives for hard to fill locations

Applying to Country Positions:
– allow country staff to be a roster metro each year
– SNR – 2 weeks or less not to be counted toward country score

Leave
– Want leave flexibility to support family arrangements
– Smaller leave blocks
– Leave can be taken at half pay
– Expand annual leave entitlements
– PT one or two week blocks
– Purchase extra leave
– Paid family and domestic leave
– Paid Culture and ceremonial leave, 20 days defence leave
– LSL should be taken when convenient to employee, smaller periods, not less than one week
– Carers leave 5 days per annum, non-accruable, standalone from Personal leave
– Increase personal leave entitlement.
– Be able to talk half shift off for medical appointments or urgent carer leave
– Special leave ability to be used on public holidays
– Include Medics in Paramedic Agreement
– St John to cover cost of registration
– Paid Professional Development leave
– Increased regional Allowances to reflect differing needs of different regions
– Increase on call allowance substantially
– Metro travel matrix to reflect current fuel prices
– Air conditioning allowance substantial increase
– Review period which can be rostered away from home depot
– Time plus Km to rostered station

Death Cover for Whole Workforce
– Allocated positions clauses redrafted for clarity
– Backfill with holder of next person on list

Adequate time to be provided to relocate form metro to country.

Paramedic Leadership Roles
CSP to be permanent classification
AM to be a classification
STT to be a classification

Country SM JD to be reviewed, and properly compensated. Admin hours without approval.
Rate to be based on CP salary
CP- seek permanent CP positions, dual CP as per WACHS strategy
ECP should be classification.

Secondments – Some secondments to be longer.
NW Allowance – removal of tier, return flights clarify.
Dispute Settling Procedure – advise all parties of any disputes raised.
Wellness – seek new wellness entitlement, increase to type and activity that can be used for.

UWU CCP Claim
New classification for CCPs
– CCP1 (intern) (on current pay)
– CCP2 road ($180k)
– CCP3 helicopter (rescue crew qualified) ($180, then when crew qual additional)
– CCP4 (chief CCP / Senior CCP)

New Pay Structure
Amend ‘Other duties’ to be re-drafted
CCP roster
CCP Crew Formation (CCP/CCP Intern or CCP/CCP)
Helicopter subject to DFES
Ultrasound lead, sims lead, airway lead (appropriately compensated)
Tutoring allowance to apply to CCP
TPD and Life Insurance into an allowance
New allowance (deployment allowance)\
New allowance (gym payment of $500 a year, in addition to existing allowance)
New allowance (CCP3 and CCP4 will not receive travel to Jandakot base)
Bring all CCP conditions under one section of the agreement
Road CCP – perm CCP can make a perm position request for new bases.

New Clause CCP Job Share
Able to job share
Standalone clause to be placed in CCP section
Allocation of CCP overtime to be reflected in the EBA
Changes to overtime matrix to be by agreement.
On call roster to be 0.5% CCP of salary

Meeting Closed
15:00.

Next Meeting
April 15th 2024 (09:00-12:00).

To view the Combined Log of Claims once available, click here.

To view the St John Log of Claims, when available, click here.

Meeting Chaired By
Carly Rees.

Meeting Conducted
13:30.

Committee Attendees
John Thomas, Mike Hardwick, Lee Waller, Dave Higgins, Conrad Fairhead, Paul Davies, Callan McClure, Dave Bryant, Rick Candy, and Shannan Bradley.

Committee Apologies
There were no apologies.

SJA Attendees
Carly Rees, Joel Moore, Joe Cuthbertson, and Karen Stewart.

Terms of Reference
Today’s meeting was just to discuss the bargaining process. In essence, good faith bargaining, the parties log of claims and being released to attend meetings. St John want the next meeting to be on March 25th for a half day meeting, in which all parties will present their items. The meetings will be held each fortnight on Mondays.

This may progress to weekly meetings or full day meetings, but this will depend on the agenda.

Meeting Closed
15:30.

Next Meeting
March 25th 2024 (09:00-12:00).

Click here to view the AEAWA FAQs regarding the EBA.

Survey Status – Closed
Survey Data Collected – 30/12/2023- 13/01/2024
Number of Participants – 710
Survey Results – Click here for the demographics and here for the results.