Choosing between their job or family is a choice forced upon paramedics every day and despite ongoing negotiations with Ambulance Victoria for better conditions, the needs of paramedics remain ignored.
Victorian paramedics work over 800 hours of forced over time every day due to increased hospital activity or being dispatched to a case minutes before the end of a shift, sometimes after a rostered end time.
Victorian Ambulance Union has represented Victorian paramedics for the past 12 months trying to come to an agreement.
A local paramedic said the focus of the negotiations was the conditions.
“Obviously some part of it is about the pay but it’s mainly about the conditions for us,” she said.
“A big thing for us is end of shift management and forced incidental overtime. We have a start and finish time, but we never know what time we’re actually going to finish.
“A lot of us, especially here at Kilmore, have young kids and are constantly having to get someone else to pick the kids up from daycare or school or are not making it home in time to eat dinner with the family.”
On top of missing commitments, paramedics are impacted financially through, for example, having to pay late fees at childcare.
Protected industrial action began last Monday, with ambulance vehicles covered in written messages – ‘chalking up’ the trucks – highlighting the need for better conditions to the community.
“Ambulance Victoria have put offers to us, but it just seems that in order for them to give, they have to take something away,” the paramedic said.
“So obviously they’re still talking but we’re not really close to anything that helps our conditions.
“Ultimately what we would love is to come to a decision before we have to take any further action, but the union does have some more protected action that will roll out gradually as needed.”
Paramedics expect to work overtime when a patient urgently needed their skills however, the current call taking system categorised people calling Triple Zero inefficiently sending paramedics into non-urgent situations and into overtime.
On a good day a round trip for Kilmore paramedics would add three hours to a shift.
“We’re spending a lot of our incidental overtime on non-emergencies,” the local paramedic said.
“The service to save Triple Zero for emergencies is great but we need the service to save us for emergencies as well.”
A survey of Victorian Ambulance Union members by Swinburne and RMIT found the number of paramedics looking at leaving the job in the next year has climbed to one in five, in a workforce where over half the paramedics have been in the job for less than five years.
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