The Health Services Union is describing the announcement a not-for-profit operator will run the new Maitland Hospital as a "camouflaged attempt to slash staff conditions and job security".
Yesterday the State Government made the announcement the Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) would be scrapped and replaced with a not-for-profit operator which the NSW Health Minister says will maximise the taxpayer's dollar.
The HSU is now ramping up its campaign to defend and promote staff conditions at Maitland Hospital and continue to push for a public hospital.
HSU NSW Secretary Gerard Hayes says while it may be better than a multinational corporation running the hospital, it is not good enough.
"We don't know too much of the details at this point in time but I don't see the need to go down the path of having a not-for-profit provider when the government can actually manage these issues themselves and actually have done basically in every other hospital in NSW."
The Health Services Union can't understand why out of five hospitals which were up for a PPP, three have been taken off the table and one's gone into a different partnership, and the new Maitland hospital has been chosen to go down the not-for-profit pathway.
"Around 47 per cent of households in the Maitland catchment don't have private health insurance, that means that people of Maitland are under some pressure. I can't understand why a government would single this hospital out as it has with the Northern beaches hospital to run a different model to the rest of the state," said Gerard Hayes.
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