The Victorian Ambulance Union last week conducted a vote of no confidence in the Ambulance Victoria executive.
The VAU conducted an SMS poll of its AV members and asked if they endorsed a request that the Minister for Ambulance Services take urgent action to appoint new management that will be able to build and maintain the confidence of the workforce.
About 4200 members responded to the poll, with 97.8% of members voting to endorse the no confidence motion.
Danny Hill, secretary of the Victorian Ambulance Union, said the result was almost unanimous.
“It should serve as a massive wake up call to the AV Board and Victorian Government that the AV workforce does not have confidence in the AV executive,” Mr Hill said.
“The members sign up to be emergency workers. They feel like the AV executive is taking the service in a different direction away from the core role of an emergency ambulance service.
“The biggest factors crippling the ambulance service and our members, are hospital ramping and call taking accuracy. AV’s response is always ‘that’s out of our control’. The workforce is sick of hearing that.
“The biggest improvements we ever saw to AV performance occurred when the Andrews Government appointed an administrator with a specific goal of rebuilding AV as an emergency service.
“The situation now is as dire as it was back then and we need new leadership to break the inertia in AV.”
Premier Jacinta Allan said on Friday that the government wished to see issues between management and the workforce in AV resolved and that the minister was taking advice from her department to work to address the matter.
