Vacancy Management policy

As you know we held an urgent teleconference with council delegates – HP and other interested delegates – regarding the Memorandum and Vacancy Management Policy being put out by Qld Health corporate office – this policy affects only Health Practitioners.

Memorandum and Guideline for Vacancies for Managers outline clearly what management have proposed and are attempting to force districts into implementing:

This is quite alarming in its content and potential application / implementation in each district – there is for example a potential that any vacancy would be advertised at an HP2 or HP3 regardless of the level of the vacating officer – i.e. if an HP4 leaves a position they can be replaced with an HP2 or HP3 – and none of the usual job redesign or organisational change and restructuring guidelines would be taken into account.

 The other controversial part of this is the creation on “HP Oversight Committees” in each district with terms of reference that don’t include union involvement.

Delegates voted to call on HPIBB delegates to demand the policy be rescinded at the meeting the following day (yesterday) however management at the HPIBB refused to cancel the policy.

A letter was sent to the Director General calling on him to intervene and scrap this policy – and asking for a response by Thursday 18 February 2010, to date we still have not received a response.

In the teleconference of HP how to guides, members were completely opposed to this new policy and the oversight committee concept. It was agreed that if there was a negative or no response from the Director General that HP how to guides would set up meetings with members to report back on this extremely important issue.

You can download a meeting kit which contains everything you need to run a report back meeting on the new HP Vacancy Management policy. This can be downloaded from above.

If you have any further questions please email hp@qpsu.org.au.

Yours in Union

The HP Team