Monday – A signed up member of the Apathy Club!

Strong, very militant unions, which run an almost closed shop, have an extremely powerful base, and which can hold managements of companies almost to ransom, with their demands, and extremely strong negotiating positions are a thing of the past in the UK. We can argue the merits and pitfalls of such a system until we are blue in the face. The UK is still trying to make sense of the abolition of this system. Here in Australia there are a lot of businesses that are in the grip of these strong single unions. As to be expected the paramedics here also have a very strong negotiating union.

Somewhat appropriately, in a part of a country which the ambulance service is struggling to define a role, either as an emergency service, or a transport service that will answer a few emergency calls, the union is under a general, rather toothless sounding ambiguous group called the "Hospitality, and Miscellaneous Workers Union". So the Hospitality Workers are those people who work in hotels, casinos, and bars, and the Miscellaneous Workers are people who don't fit in anywhere else.

Anyway, since I've arrived the union has been negotiating on our behalf for our tri-annual agreement on our working conditions, and wages. We get a three year agreement with our terms and conditions, and wage rises. It turns out that on June 30 this year the last agreement expired. There have been meetings on and off since I've been here, and surprisingly there hasn't been an agreement yet between us paramedics, and the St. John's Ambulance Board.

Today there was another of those meetings that all the ambulance service members were invited to attend, and hear the latest pay offer, and what is requested in return for this money. There were some tempting giveaways at the union offices including free hotdogs, and t-shirt's in order to entice us to come along. Sadly, as I was down in the country depot – Mandurah, and couldn't attend.

I will listen with interest the outcome of meeting, and I'm sure that it won't be long – as there were newspaper reporters there. I wonder what the general public will make of the fact that we've been recommended to turn the 15% pay rise over 3 years that has been put on the table. I'll let you know the general reaction.