AV MOU – Surge scale back

After recent pressure regarding AV’s continued reliance on the surge workforce, AV and the Dept. of Health have hastily come up with a plan to reduce the impact of surge.

Surge will not disappear completely, but the forward planning of surge will be reduced and the focus will be on short term vacancies rather than roster lines.

The AEAV fully understood the need for surge in the first place and has been quite vocal since roll out about the detrimental impact on paramedics of continuously working with unqualified colleagues.

The AEAV however cannot express strongly enough our frustration with AV and the government that their failure to commit to a safe working environment for paramedics over many years pre-Covid was the underlying cause.

That frustration is also exacerbated by the fact that AV and the government refused to implement measures that would have reduced the need for surge. The contempt for those of you working on road is unfortunately a legacy of many years or focusing on KPI’s instead of paramedic welfare.

The AEAV has signed the MOU but we have also expressed our reservations. Effectively the remedy proposed by AV is forcing staff to make a decision between unsustainable pressures from working without a qualified partner and the unsustainable pressure of working more hours.

AV have said in their email to staff “Please note, this model is not designed to encourage increased overtime;”. Who are they kidding? The plan can only work if already exhausted paramedics take less sick leave and do more overtime. This is not rocket science, if the surge workforce is not filling the shifts then someone has to, or the system falls over. And why increase overtime payments if it is not to get people to work more overtime. So lets not pretend this plan is anything other than what it is.

Once again we have AV using their comms to gaslight you. In a post VEOHRC world it is staggering that they still think it is okay to behave this way.