As a resultof our requests, there’s been a further ‘toolbox’ style meeting in the kitchen with Josh Fraser and Kate McDonald to discuss the finer details of how the kitchen reflooring will affect members.
 
When we first raised possible financial and time implications of the process we suggested ways to ease many of the concerns, and we’ve reiterated that under no circumstances will we accept staff incurring a financial loss or having to work further away from home to do their rostered hours.
 
As a result, in the meeting held last week, Josh clarified the following;

• A pool vehicle will leave from NWRH at the scheduled start of the shift and arriving back at the NWRH at the scheduled finish time of that shift. So for a 6am-1:36pm shift the bus leaves NWRH at 6am and returns at 1:36pm.
• Nobody will face any loss of wages.
• There’ll be a real effort to get all wet dishes cooked for the shutdown period before the kitchen’s closure, so it’s mainly the roasting of meat and vegetables that’ll be required at the MCH.  

There’s still the question of what they’ll do with staff unable to go to the MCH, and Josh said he hopes to have rotational teams working through the Mersey, but we’ve said this may not be possible for some staff so there needs to be an alternative before it gets to that stage. We’ve told Josh there are staff willing to go to the MCH and advised him to look at that as the first option.

They’re reluctant to commit as yet but we’ll keep pushing for answers on temporary redeployment to other areas within NWRH until works are finished, and we’ve also requested a written undertaking that any staff who move to the MCH, or redeploy to other areas of the NWRH, for the kitchen re-flooring period will return to the position and hours they were in immediately before the changes.

As things progress we’ll update members.