State Secretary of the Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union (CEPU), Len Cooper said if the Victorian government did not come back with an acceptable decision by tonight, labour representatives would consider increasing the intensity of its current action with new measures that may include crippling ECV's ability to record call statistics it needs to bill and negotiate with the Victorian Police Department.
"We can affect the statistical role of ECV; make it very hard for the management," said Cooper.
The CEPU said it had been seeking settlement of a disputed aspect of the EBA between ECV and its employees concerning shift worker penalty rates on behalf of workers since September.
The union rejected a settlement offer from the company Wednesday prompting it to organise workers to take industrial action.
According to the CEPU the lack of penalty rates for the emergency call centre operatives was contributing to a high rate of staff turn-over.
"The impact on the staff is that they have a lot of time off because its not worth their while to work on the unsociable shifts they have a lot of time off and that's putting the pressure back on to the people that are at work when there's not sufficient staff on shifts," said Cooper.
The CEPU claims workers are not currently being given enough incentive to stay.
The ECV said it was currently working closely with the union to negotiate a settlement, but indicated that its major concern was now to keep the service running effectively.
ECV said the negotiations were no more protracted than any other EBA. It said EBAs naturally take a long time to negotiatethat it had tried to speed up the resolution process with a settlement offer but that the union's rejected it.
ECV, under its former name Intergraph, ran foul of the Victorian government last year when a Metropolitan Ambulance Service Royal Commission investigated the reporting of its call handling performance.
At the time the company was paid on condition that it met a performance requirement to answer 90 per cent of calls within five seconds. The commission investigated allegations about irregularities in its performance reporting and claims that it used questionable methods to massage its performance statistics.
At the time the company admitted that some callers to ambulance services were being put through in longer than 60 seconds.
As a former Intergraph employee I totally support any action by those people working for ECV. Prior to the formation of ECV I tried very hard to bring to the attention of the Bracks goverment the necessity for improved conditions at the emergency service communications centres. Particuarly ambulance communications based at Tally Ho. Unless someone addresses the problems of poor pay, poor conditions, inadequate training and presumably continuing incompetent managment, then this state may well face an enormous crisis in emergency comms. I in my own small and humble way have tried to influence this goverment to create a viable enviroment for the creation of the best emergency communications centre in the world. Obviously I was not successful. This goverment wants exactly what the Kennet goverment had: first class emergency communications at bargain basement prices and it has no more idea of the real issues affecting staff than the previous goverment. These people do one hell of a job for peanuts and their conditions would not for one second be tolerated in any essential communications enviroment, such as Air Traffic Services. I wish them the very best of luck
S Royle