By Kevin Taylor
MOE — Victoria's Latrobe Valley has three substantial public hospitals: a modern 150-bed hospital in Moe, one in Traralgon and the Hobsons Park psychiatric hospital. There are also two publicly owned nursing homes.
For six years now, there has been a fight over the future of local hospitals. It is now clear to all that we have been fighting the first of many public hospital privatisations in Victoria.
In 1991, Moe and Traralgon Hospitals were amalgamated to form the Latrobe Valley Regional Hospital. In 1993, the state government offered to build a new hospital.
It claimed that the savings made by closing our existing hospitals and consolidating services would be spent on new and better services. The Latrobe Valley community rejected this offer, suspecting, correctly, that privatisation was on the agenda.
The regional hospital campuses were starved of funds, and new management created an unhappy and unworkable environment. The government now intends to close our three public hospitals, sell off or close the nursing homes and allow a private operator to build, own and operate a new facility.
The Latrobe Valley has been at the forefront of rationalisation and privatisation. We have learned by bitter experience with the power industry that privatisation leads to massive job losses as well as more expensive and reduced services.
Public First is proposing action. The government is to be given two options: a) maintain the existing public hospitals and nursing homes with appropriate levels of funding and upgrading; b) or, if it wants to build a new hospital, that hospital is to be publicly owned and operated, must be demonstrated to be a vast improvement on what we had prior to 1992, and must be approved by the community.
We believe that a highly publicised blockade of any construction site, supported by protests around the state involving other hospitals targeted for closure or privatisation, can be effective. We have an opportunity to build within our communities the necessary organisation to defeat the anti-worker and anti-community policies of the government.
In October, the Gippsland Trades and Labour Council initiated a Latrobe Valley-wide strike over the closure of the high dependency unit at Moe Hospital and the downgrading of emergency services at Traralgon Hospital. This created a dangerous situation where the Latrobe Valley, a major industrial area, had reduced emergency services.
The community and unionists showed clearly that they were prepared to have a go. However, the key to the strike was the power workers, and the government knew it could undermine the strike by separating these workers from the rest and threatening them with legal action.
This is what happened. But the tactic succeeded only because of lack of unity among unions and lack of understanding of what it is we are fighting.
The strike was not properly organised or planned. The strikers demanded reinstatement of the cancelled services but did not tackle the issue of privatisation.
Such actions only delay the government's intentions. We need to work towards a total defeat of the privatisation.
[Kevin Taylor is the coordinator of Public First Campaign Latrobe Valley. Public First is requesting support from all Victorian trade unions, community groups and organisations. For more information write to PO Box 153, Moe Vic 3825, or phone (03) 51 273772.]