The Health Workers Union (HWU) is asking its more than 200 members at Australian Clinical Laboratories (ACL) in Victoria to vote on an “in-principle agreement” that would further slash the real wages of most workers and do nothing to address their concerns over working conditions, safety and job security.

The Pathology Workers Rank-and-File Committee (PWRFC) urges ACL workers to vote “no” to this rotten proposal. The HWU cannot be trusted. They have sabotaged the struggle from the beginning and are now pushing a sell-out deal to prevent the mobilisation of workers.

After nearly a year of stalled negotiations, the HWU is promoting a deal that falls far short of workers’ demands, using misleading claims to push through an agreement that benefits management rather than those on the front lines.

This union-management offer has been put together and is being pushed by the HWU bureaucracy in a transparent attempt to suppress the opposition of workers to their dire wages and conditions. It came after the union called off a strike last month, less than 48 hours after it was called, in a clear violation of the intention of workers, who voted almost unanimously in February for industrial action including strikes of up to 24 hours.

In an email urging workers to vote “yes,” the HWU leadership only reveals the pay offer for one of the more than 50 job classifications covered by the deal, leaving all other workers in the dark as to what they are voting on.

The email states, “The full rate card is still being created, but the headline figure is this: Grade 2 (Year 3) Path Collectors will receive a 6.8 percent pay increase, from $28.09 to $30 an hour.” Even this meagre increase will only come into effect from July, with only an incremental rise of around $1 per hour backdated to January.

The current $28.09 figure is the federal Award rate, that is, the minimum that can be legally paid for this category of work. This is the result of previous union-enforced attacks, including the last HWU-ACL enterprise agreement, brokered in 2021. It imposed three years of real wage cuts, providing annual nominal pay rises of 2.24 percent while the official inflation rate climbed to 7.8 percent.

This means that, even for the subset of workers who would receive it, the 6.8 percent rise would be woefully inadequate.

Every other section of workers at ACL has likewise been hit with years of real wage cuts. But for them, the HWU says only that the new proposal “is equal to or better than the best previous offer.” These weasel words can only mean the further slashing of real pay: ACL’s most recent offer included derisory nominal annual pay increases as low as 0.24 percent for many classifications.

By putting this offer, which contains nothing for whole swathes of the workforce, to a vote, the HWU bureaucracy is attempting to turn one section of its membership against the rest. This divisive action must be opposed!

The email says nothing about non-wage provisions in the offer, but claims “the HWU believes we are able to secure additional improvements in occupational health and safety before it goes out to an all-staff vote.”

In other words, the HWU bureaucracy is telling its members, “sign first and ask questions later.”

The HWU’s promotion of the in-principle agreement, based on the sketchiest of outlines, is in keeping with the secretive and deliberately confusing manner in which the union bureaucracy has carried out the whole 18-month dispute. The union has not at any stage provided workers with a log of claims, or even a specific wage demand, to explain what is being negotiated in its backroom discussions with management.

In an effort to force through a “yes” vote, the HWU leadership is now presenting workers with a false choice, between the new offer and the prospect of months idly waiting for a deal to be brokered through arbitration in the Fair Work Commission (FWC). They insist that the alternative course—a campaign of industrial action including strikes, which workers have overwhelmingly endorsed—is an impossibility.

In an online meeting last Thursday, HWU officials told workers that the FWC would likely uphold ACL’s application to ban strikes of 2 to 24 hours, on the phoney grounds that this would pose a risk to public health. The FWC’s position is in reality something of a moot point, since the HWU has voluntarily cancelled any action it has called as soon as the company has complained.

The HWU is telling ACL workers that the only possible response to the attack on their legal right to strike is to give up and accept whatever crumbs the company offers.

This is a fraud! There is an alternative—a political and industrial struggle against the industrial courts and the pro-business Fair Work Act.

But this is impossible within the framework of the HWU, which, along with all other Australian unions, not only agrees with, but relies upon, the anti-strike laws as a means of shutting down workers’ struggles. Working with successive federal Labor governments since 2008, the union bureaucracies have played an integral role in drafting, strengthening and enforcing these draconian measures.

The only way forward for ACL workers is to take matters into their own hands. This means rejecting the HWU’s betrayal and building rank-and-file committees in every workplace to lead the fight for real demands, including:

• An immediate 30 percent pay increase to compensate for past losses. All future pay rises linked to inflation, with a monthly cost-of-living adjustment to prevent workers from falling behind.
• Safe workplaces with proper security, ergonomic protections and full infection control measures.
• No job cuts and an end to understaffing. We need more workers, reduced workloads and full job security.
• An end to corporate control over pathology! Reverse the privatisation of pathology services, which must be fully funded and freely available to all.
• No more secret union-management negotiations! The rank-and-file must be privy to all negotiations and discussions affecting us and have democratic control over them.

ACL workers are not alone. Workers at all the major pathology companies and throughout the health sector all face an attack on their jobs, wages and conditions spearheaded by Labor governments at the state and federal level, with the collaboration of the HWU and other health unions.

It is to these broad layers of other health workers that ACL staff must appeal, in order to mount a unified struggle for decent wages, safe conditions, and proper funding for healthcare.

Hospitals and other vital public infrastructure, along with the major corporations and banks, must be placed under full public ownership and democratic control of the working class. Only in this way can society’s resources be employed to fulfil the needs of the entire working class, not further the profit interests of the wealthy few.