Together Queensland :: MOCA3 has expired - important update on your conditions

The certified agreement for Medical Officers, MOCA3, nominally expired on Tuesday 30 June, which means that the pressure is on to get a fair deal for medical officers in a new 'MOCA4' collective agreement.

While this is being negotiated, MOCA3 continues to apply to junior medical officers, and an SMO contract continues to apply to senior medical officers - until they are replaced by a new collective agreement. VMOs will continue to be covered by their contract, at least for the time being.

Bargaining is progressing rapidly, with Queensland Health proposing that we try to reach agreement by 31 July 2015.

We don't yet have an offer or a government-approved position from Queensland Health, but we expect to have one in the week beginning 13 July. This will give members only two weeks to consider the offer, reject or accept it by 31 July. If you reject the offer then we would need to consider members taking collective action in early August.

We will therefore be seeking to arrange meetings with Together SMO and JMO members in the last two weeks of July. Please contact Dan Goldman in our union office to arrange a meeting at your hospital/facility.

For additional information JMOs click here and VMOs click here.

SMOs and MSRPP members please read on for important issues in bargaining to replace contracts and:

Have your say on extended hours and penalty rates NOW

Extended hours or "rostering flexibility" is a key feature of what QH and HHSs are seeking out of negotiations and will be the feature of next week's negotiations on Tuesday, when QH will put to us the detail of their proposal. We need your urgent input so we have the evidence we need to robustly defend your current conditions or consider and provide feedback to alternatives. Please fill in this quick survey here and ask your colleagues to join Together to have their say in this urgent and important issue.

Have your say on extended hours and penalty rates NOW

There is also a question about the rates paid for overtime, recall and on-call. Under your contract you are paid for on-call, recall and overtime at simplified rates as a loading on your base rate of pay. For overtime this has benefited the majority of SMOs and for recall this has slightly disadvantaged the majority of SMOs. Overall across these two categories the data from QH shows that the changes have been better for SMOs across the whole cohort. If we returned to MOCA3 rates for overtime and recall then more SMOs would be disadvantaged rather than advantaged.

While the government has not yet signed off on an offer, there are a range of other matters in your claims that Queensland Health appear to be prepared to agree to: for example, payment by exception for on-call and other out of hours work and continuation of payments. See more here.