Episode 2: An introduction to enterprise bargaining

Transcript

Transcribed by Lake Majstorovic
All information cited was accurate as of the time of recording (August 2021).

[Lively electric guitar theme music plays.]

Linda Jenkin: Aw, now industrial action stuff’s over we’ll have to take down the dinosaurs.

Craig McGregor: They have deflated on all levels, you know.

[Laughter.]

[Theme music volume lowers as speaking begins.]

Female voice-over: Welcome to the VAHPA Podcast, where we discuss the issues facing Allied Health Professionals. Each episode, we discuss new topics including wages and working conditions, lifestyle and career structure, Enterprise Agreements, dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, Vikings and shieldmaidens, and all progressive causes facing unionists.

The VAHPA Podcast, the podcast of the Victorian Allied Health Professionals.

[Theme music fades out.]

Sarah Hathway: Hi VAHPA members, Sarah Hathaway here, Lead Organizer for the Hospitals organizing team at VAHPA.

I’m excited to tell you that this round of public sector bargaining we have a team of four dedicated organizers to public sector bargaining, along with support from Allied Health students in campaign organizer roles who have been on the phones to many of you over the last few weeks.

This episode features VAHPA Secretary Craig McGregor and lead organizer Linda Jenkin, reflecting on everything from dinosaurs to games won in the last public sector campaign. Spoiler alert, the dinosaurs will be making a comeback.

Linda is now leading up our Disability, Diagnostic and Primary Care organizing team, however, has previous experience to share along with Craig in this episode of the VAHPA Podcast.

Craig: Hello, VAHPA members. In the last public sector campaign, we felt that we didn’t get information out to you as promptly and as succinctly as we would have liked.

So, one of the things we thought we’d do for the coming public sector campaign is to do a podcast, so we can have a day of bargaining, talk to you just about exactly what happened, what we thought was good, what we thought was bad, and what was relevant to you, et cetera. So this is a really exciting project for us.

Now, I’m here today with Linda Jenkin, who you will all know no doubt. She’s the VAHPA Lead Organizer. Linda, would you like to say– [Linda: Hi everyone.] Oh, there you go, that’s Linda.

And Rjurik, who is our senior researcher here. Now, Rjurik’s the man behind the– the podcast and doing all the back of house. Rjurik?

Rjurik Davidson: Hello everybody. So, I’m going to take over from Craig now, and we’re going to get to the hard-hitting questions, the ones which have been on everybody’s lips to begin with.

And that is… tell us about the dinosaur. [All speakers: Laughing]

Craig: Yeah, indeed.

Rjurik: Where did the dinosaur come from? It’s on the front of our last Enterprise Agreement, and I understand it took quite a, uh, healthy part, was almost like a… what’s the right word? Is it like a fourth column? No, that’s– that’s someone who’s not on your side, right? [Craig: Laughs] Anyway, it was, uh, an auxiliary in the fight for our last Enterprise Agreement.

Craig: And look, our dinosaur really backed us up and supported us the whole way. And, um, T-Rex was an invaluable part of the project.
Initially, we were looking around for how we could make our campaign really pop. And we looked around the world, we looked at protests around the world, and we saw right in our backyard, the ambulance union, doing this, you know, window writing, and we thought God damn it, we need our own kind of text or on the window thing, this is just really going gangbusters. But how can we do it, we’ve got a diversity of professions, et cetera. And I don’t know how it happened, but, uh–

Linda: Well I thought it happened because your children are obsessed with dinosaurs. [All speakers: Laughing] So, my first response was, Craig.

Craig: Well, there is some truth to that, and we were watching just extraordinary amounts of dinosaur documentaries at that point in time.

But I think I raised it with Andrew Hewat, the Assistant Secretary, in this kind of very tentative way and said, Andrew, what would you think… we need some kind of theme. And he just jumped on it.

And I don’t think… it was– it wasn’t fully formed at all. And we had a half hour laugh, came up with a concept, and brought it back to the office. And, Linda, I think you were the first person we kind of [Linda: Laughs] raised it with.

Rjurik: [Chuckles] What was your first response, Linda, that’s what I want to know.

Linda: That was my first response [Rjurik: It was silence, right?], was come on, Craig, yeah, yeah, good idea.

Um, no, look, it very quickly made sense in the context, particularly of our classification structure, which was very much out of date. And it, you know, very, very quickly resonated with members. So, yep.

Rjurik: It’s interesting, that. Because even the workplaces that I’ve been to, uh, some of the delegates have said to me, oh, we want to keep the dinosaur. Can we keep the dinosaur? We need to keep the dinosaur.

So [All speakers: Laughing] it’s clearly very popular, something which I mean, in some ways, it’s exactly the kinds of things I think that unions should be doing, right.

Craig: We got recognition around the world there. You know, there were people– there were Italian unionists and that, [Rjurik: Chuckles] yeah! Saying, look at this, this is a great way of doing it. You know, had to do Google Translate, et cetera. But that this a great way of doing industrial action.

It can be hard and long and difficult, but you’ve got to inject some levity. You’ve got to make it fun. And, you– you know, I think that worked really well on that level, the whole dinosaur thing.

Linda: It did. And towards the end, and you would think, you know, at the end of a long campaign, all people were worried about was their improved terms and conditions. But there was quite a lot of–

Craig: We do put it to the employers collectively. So this is something– it’s not just something the union does unilaterally, it’s something that all the employees agreed to, and all the workers agree to, and that’s voted on on that level. Sorry, Linda, please go on.

Linda: No, no, and this one’s a little bit different to any other of our Agreements, because it also involves the Department. So usually, it’s just us and the bosses, and this has the Department as well, so they have also agreed to it, so.

And that’s important, um, because when you’re implementing it, and people say, well, you know, can they afford this? They being the employer or the Department.

Well, we’re able to say, well, they were both at the table, and they’ve both agreed to this. People will often say that, you know, we’ve got this in policy, there’s a lot of misunderstanding about their policy can be changed overnight. It’s not enforceable.

Craig: Government policy, you mean, or…

Linda: Ah, employer policy. Oh, and government policy, I guess, I hadn’t thought about that. But, um, yeah, employer policy.

So, you know, people would say to us in some of our workplaces for different Agreements, oh we get 1000 dollars for this a year, but as soon as the budget gets tight, that money disappears, and it’s entirely discretionary.

So, yeah, what’s important to you needs to be in your Agreement, that’s– once that’s been voted on and approved by Fair Work, it’s legally enforceable. Your employer may not like it, but until the new Agreement is negotiated, then, you know, that stands.

Craig: And now the– the issue comes to how do you enforce the entitlements that are in the Agreement. Now, this is a big deal, because often we find changes to the Agreement, and there were a lot of them last time, we’re having difficulties having employers comply with these new arrangements.

Now, you can go to Fair Work and try to argue your case there, but there are some dangers in doing that. As far as we’re concerned, the way to– the way to do it, is to just morally, on the ground, and politically, say, this is what you’ve agreed to, this is the right thing to do, it’s time for you to do this, and for members and workers to do that collectively, because that’s when you get the best outcome, and that’s when you change the culture in the workplace.

Linda: Yeah, there’s 80– 80 or so employers under that Agreement in the public sector. And you’ll find that although on paper, they’re the same conditions, in practice, they will be being applied differently. And that is because of the collective strength in particular workplaces.

So, um, not to suck up to the Assistant Secretary. But you wouldn’t, for instance, try something on at Barwon, where, you know, you have high-density, very engaged members. And you’ve basically got, you know, one of the officials on the ground. Other places, you know, we’ve said from the beginning, if you don’t fight to enforce your Agreement, then it’s just another book on the shelf. So it really does come down to how you want to use it.

And, you know, there were such significant changes last time, and improvements, that there’s a lot for people to get across. And even now, what did I say we were the other day, 350– no, 668 days or something into the Agreement? There are still people saying to us, oh, I didn’t know we had that entitlement. And it’s because they’re so busy looking after patients that this often takes a backseat.

Craig: No, absolutely. I’m sorry, Rjurik. [Laughs]

Rjurik: [Laughs] I’ll just sit quietly over here.

Craig: He’s like an alpha Secretary. God!

Linda: He’s so excited about our Agreements.

Craig: People often confuse Agreements with Awards. And that’s probably where you were about to go, Rjurik [Rjurik: Laughs], if I hadn’t taken my, you know, sensible hat off.

But– but this is something we need to be very clear about. Awards contain, really, safety net condition. Now, Agreements sit above Awards and exclude that Award. So one of the terms in an Agreement will be that the Award no longer applies.

So the Agreement, theoretically, is an improvement on the Award that you negotiate as a collective of workers, rather than something that’s gifted to you by, you know, a central government agency.

And so, we are very much in favour of Agreements and for having Agreements at every turn, and never relying on Awards. [Piano interstitial music plays in background.] But you know, there are lots of workplaces out there where Agreements aren’t in place. So you know, and that’s increasing.

[Piano interstitial music increases in volume, then fades out for next speaker.]

Rjurik: So the other aspect of the Agreement would be also that individual, um, individual members can come to us and say– say, aw, my rights have been breached according to the Agreement, and we might be able to help them as an individual, right?

Linda: Oh, yeah, certainly. Look, there are obviously lots of individual issues that people have, and they don’t necessarily want those shared with other people. We have a specific team, the Member Assist team at VAHPA, and they deal with all individual queries, that ranges from rates of pay and higher duties, higher qualifications, through to disciplinary matters, patient complaints, the whole gamut.

Craig: Lots of return to work [Linda: Yeah!] and parental leave [Linda: Yeah, oh, parental leave.] is a big– a big deal, and lots of people face difficulties there. And the Member Assist team is advocates who will go and work with you in that one-on-one capacity.

And if you don’t have the Agreement, if you don’t have that information before you, you won’t be aware of your entitlements and understand that this… really, the Agreement stands head and shoulders above any policy that might exist, it’s effectively an extension of federal legislation, and as such reigns supreme.

And so don’t be duped by local policies, et cetera. They do not supersede or, you know, beat up on the Agreement in any way, shape, or form. And, you know, this is why we make hard copies and put it out there as broadly as possible to make people aware.

Linda: Yeah, you know, people will ask questions and people responding to it, managers and whatever, will say that in quite an authoritative way, oh no, it’s our policy.

So a really practical, everyday example is personally in the public sector or public sector Agreement, there is unlimited use of stat decs for personal leave. At a number of workplaces, they will say, oh, no, you can only use– you can’t use them for consecutive days. You can’t use them on either side of a public holiday. You need to get a medical certificate, not a step deck. Now, that doesn’t– is not contained in our Agreement, and it’s harsher and more onerous. And so therefore, their policy can’t override our Agreement.

But if somebody who you are generally used to taking instruction from in the workplace says that’s our policy, most people will accept that. If they’ve got a delegate, or they’re across their Agreement, they’ll say, mm, actually, not sure that’s the case. And that’s when they call us or email and we say, yeah, nah, if you get that knocked back, then you let us know.

Craig: And that’s where the collective culture is really important, isn’t it?

Linda: Yep.

Rjurik: So, I’m looking at our last, glorious Agreement [Linda: Yes?], the hefty tome that it is. And I know that there were so many great things won during that Enterprise Agreement, uh, negotiation.

And I was wondering, you know, what were some of the stories, if you like, or things that occurred, or even gains that were won by VAHPA for that last– that last one that’s now covering members?

Craig: Yeah. [Linda: Laughs] There’s so many issues and your– the presentations the organisers were rolling out would go for, you know.

Linda: Minimum an hour. It was just an hour to just touch on everything that had changed. And certainly, um, I think the largest change probably in any one area was in the classification structure that changed both, you know, horizontally– horizontally and vertically in terms of, you know, where people would go.

And that’s directly from feedback from a survey that we did, a very large survey we did across the state where people said, you know, we want sustainable careers in Allied Health. And so therefore, there has to be more places for us to go and– and because people were getting stuck. But, you know, yeah, a whole raft of changes.

And a particularly, I guess, the one that underpins quite a lot of it in terms of being able to be enforced, is the removal of what was called consent arbitration. [Craig: Oooh.] Because although you don’t want to end up in the Commission, your employers need to know that you can go there.

Consent arbitration meant that you could only go to the Commission for arbitration, as opposed to conciliation, if the employer agreed. So if the employer thought they were going to lose, why would they agree to the referee sorting it out?

Craig: We’re doing the wrong thing. And no, we’re not gonna go to court– to, to People’s Court to get this resolved.

Linda: I’d never seen it before. I looked at this Agreement six years ago, its predecessor six years ago, and I was like, why? Why would you have this, you know. [Rjurik: Mm.]

And so, the removal of that means they’re very aware that we can and will go to the Commission. We, you know, we haven’t needed to go for arbitration and never want to do that, you know, it’s costly both in terms of times and the possible outcomes are risky, but to have that there in your toolkit is really important. So, um.

Craig: It’s slow and disempowering. And, you know, you end up having the Commissioner say, well, these are your rights, and these are your entitlements, and making a ruling.

And that can be damaging, it can create precedent if something’s interpreted in a bizarre way, like, for instance, the word “immediately” could be interpreted as a week, you know, these things, these things happen.

And so, we have that threat there, and we can do that, but we’d always rather do things politically and change that culture. I mean, that is the fundamental way in which we operate, and why we got such a good Agreement last time.

Linda: Yeah. Otherwise, I mean, theoretically, if you were just going to do it via the Commission, you don’t need to have one, one member at each workplace. [Craig: Laughs] Why would you?

Craig: You asked about stories?

Rjurik: Well I’m just sort of like, how’d it go? How’d the negotiations go? Were– were they fun?

Linda: Oh, it was a lot of fun. I mean, it, look. There’s no doubt that it was certainly challenging, particularly at the beginning, because, you know, in the context of the new branch, this was the first public sector Agreement that we’d done.

And I think the dinosaurs became a really good sort of unifying focal point for that. Once industrial action started, there was quite a lot of fun with it. We– one of our metropolitan hospitals, they were putting up the posters and they had a big Rex dino, and one of the managers came out one day and said, oh well, as long as we’ve only got one dinosaur. And then overnight, they all multiplied. And, you know, they were on ceilings, they were on pieces of equipment, they were…

Craig: And people were sending in photos of, you know, dinos having scans.

Rjurik: [Laughs]

Linda: Dinosaurs coming to team meetings. Yeah, it was good.

Craig: Yeah. That was fun.

Rjurik: And was there was there any violence done against the dinosaurs?

Linda: There was [Craig: Laughs] a little bit of deflation? We can’t, you know, we don’t want to think that managers… But, you know, look, they do– people get angsty around Agreements. So yeah, look, we think a couple of them probably got, you know.

Craig: I know, a dinosaur in the waiting room, you know, and it just seems to– it really irked me to, just, come on. It’s just– it’s ludicrous.

Linda: They did get inflated quite a lot with…

Craig: From the oxygen? Well, hey, you got to use the equipment you have available.

But– but we had the dinosaur parade at the Children’s [Linda: Yes!] which was, and we did that early on, that was a lot of fun. And yeah, but we got–

Rjurik: Tell me about this dinosaur parade, because I’ve heard about it, but nobody’s actually… all I’ve heard is “we had a dinosaur parade”, and–

Linda: So we took 50 dinosaurs, we took a huge chunk of dinosaurs, so semi inflated here and piled into a truck, and took them up, and had a bit of a rally and then a parade around the Royal Children’s.

Craig: Now, this wasn’t industrial action, this was just a protest. And it was really, you know, a way of getting media and the dinosaur. Really, one of the one of the underpinning logics was because it makes colour and movement and gives the media something to– to grasp hold of, and they really did.

And so we got TV coverage around that, and we had good turnout, and people really had fun.

Linda: Yeah, it was great!

Craig: The kids were jumping on them.

Linda: We had to sort of say gently, gently with our dinosaurs, please, little boy, they’re not gonna last forever. We didn’t know how long the campaign was gonna go.

Craig: And we’ve got some plans for similar actions coming out for the next Code Blue campaign or the next public sector campaign. HR, what do you think’s up our sleeve?

Linda: Look, I think it’s important, apart from the fact that it gives you that focal point for media, it you know, look. Industrial campaigns can be long, and a bit sort of dry. And so, it’s important to have something that people can have a bit of fun with.

And particularly when you know, look, our members do serious work every day. The last thing they want is if we’re going to sit and talk about you know, dry, boring, industrial. And, you know, there are serious matters, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t have some fun with it.

Craig: No, absolutely. And, you know, it’s a really serious document. And the fact that we have a dinosaur on the front, just, you know, creates a bit of interest in the thing [Linda: Yeah, totally.]. It’s just a little bit of fun, you know, and I think the members have really supported that and got behind it. And I think it’s good, you know, unions need to do more of that stuff, I think.

Linda: It’s allowed me to buy whole ranges of dinosaur socks.

All speakers: [Laughing]

Rjurik: Dinosaur apparel

Linda: Dinosaur apparel, ooh, that’s right. Yes.

Rjurik: Wow.

Craig: Really has.

Rjurik: [Laughs]

Linda: I’ve got a dinosaur lunchbox, yeah, what can I say?

Rjurik: I think I need to get some dime– dinosaur stuff.

Linda: We have been talking about you in relation to your lack of dinosaurs.

Rjurik: [Heavy fake sigh] My lack of dinosaurs, yeah.

Craig: Yeah, my kids are very disappointed, Rjurik.

Rjurik: I can only imagine.

Craig: Yes.

Rjurik: So, it turns out that we in fact, have an Enterprise Agreement negotiation. It’s the Code Blue Two campaign.

So we’re going to have a whole new range of, um, things to negotiate for, a whole new range of [Craig: Hmm.] goals [Linda: Yup.], so tell our members about that.

Craig: Well, we had a discussion, we opted to go with Code Blue Two. I mean, we’re on a good thing, stick with it.

We talked about various options, but we think, you know, that branding, we had to fight really hard. As Linda said earlier, this was our first big public sector campaign, you know, 12000 workers under this Agreement, and we had to demonstrate that, you know, we had what it took to make this work.

And slowly that Code Blue branding took off, and we think it’s too early to change it, we’re going with Code Blue Two, we are going to go with the dinosaur again. Oh, [Linda: Cheering] [Rjurik: Spoiler alert!] I’ll let that cat out of the bag.

That is– that has been hotly contested, we’ll let you know. But I think why the heads have prevailed, and we’re going with dinos… we might go with a stegosaurus, or maybe a different sort of raptor.

Linda: I don’t know how Rex is going to feel about that, but you know.

Craig: But Rex gets so much media anyway, the old t-rex.

Linda: That’s true, yeah, you need diversity in…

Craig: Dino diversity.

Linda: Dino diversity, yeah.

Craig: But look, we have achieved a lot in the last round, and we’re pretty aspirational. There are a few things that we’re really keen to nail down, that we really put in nascent kind of frameworks for last time.

We put in, as Linda referred to earlier, that breadth of career path. So, the clinical educators path, the research path, the advanced clinician. And the chief path has been there for a long period of time, but we incorporated it fully into the structures and we did some work around that.

But what we think is really important is to really progress that clinical educator structure and get that right. And we did, in parallel with the Agreement. Last time, we had an agreement for several million dollars to roll out some Grade 3 clinical educators and some researchers. But the clinical educators who worked at a number of departments, and have really set up very successful structures, we think that– that test… that test case has gone really well. And we want to see that rolled out right across the state, right across the public healthcare network. So that’s important to us.

The classification structure, there’s a lot to discuss there. But we unified it, we had dozens and dozens and dozens of separate structures, and we wanted to bring all that together, and we did that. Now there’s further work we want to do there.

And I guess in particular, we want to shrink Grade 1 and make Grade 1 really a kind of wet behind the ears, you’re learning your trade kind of period, and then an automatic progression to Grade 2. And we’re very serious about making that happen.

And having a more extended Grade 2 structure over– over more years, rather than, you know, a longer Grade 1 structure. That’s pretty aspirational, um, and there’s a lot of work to be done there.

But the number one issue, I think, is workload and wage theft. And Linda, you’re out there with the members every day. And…

Linda: Yeah, look, the workload stuff is… like it’s just enormous, it’s hard to find the words to explain how serious it is.

So people, you know, some of my campuses which I’ve had, for the six years have always had workload issues, but they’re now so extreme. And we have people where we’ve done some mapping and surveying doing like… some of them 20% extra unpaid work a week. So for people, you know, they’re donating a day’s work a week, or they’re being robbed of a day’s work.

And I think there’s been a growing consciousness we used to talk about or members used to talk about it as “donating time” or subsidizing the system. And now we quite clearly call it wage theft, because there’s no question that employers know it’s happening.

But you know, our members are good eggs, and they very much fear that if they, you know, they don’t do that for these patients, who’s going to do it? If they don’t do that for their students or their junior staff members, who’s going to do it? And that’s being taken advantage of, so, um. And it’s not cool.

Craig: And it causes long term problems, you know, you need to confront that and– and withdraw maybe in the short term to fix a longer term problem and provide better patient care. Because, you know, you go about doing that, you can’t keep cutting corners because you’re asked to and keep being crunched. It’s just not okay, right.

Rjurik: It creates all kinds of other issues, doesn’t it? I mean, it’s like, it’s a little snowball that ends up in a gigantic one

Linda: It’s got issues for patients, it’s got issues for recruitment. There are hospitals, which clearly we won’t name, who cannot recruit.

Craig: And for careers. People just walk out of their careers, 5, 10 years in, they just can’t. They burn out.

Linda: And we’ve got professions where we would have Grade 2 and Grade 3s in particular professions telling Grade 1 students not to take jobs at particular hospitals, because they will be burnt.

And that’s about workload, and not just their workload, but the workload of the people who are supposed to be supervising and looking after them.

Craig: Funding.

Linda: Yeah, it’s just funding. It’s, you know, the– the public sector is always, you know, been attractive in terms of training positions, but a lot of it’s not seen now as an attractive place to stay.

Because the workloads don’t allow people to do what they trained to do. In some places, what they’re doing now is mostly referral, not actual treatment. That’s not why anybody became a health professional, you know, that’s.. they wanted to work with patients. So yeah, it’s a massive problem.

Craig: Allied Health is huge in the public sector, you know, we’re a massive part of the workforce, yet, I don’t think we’re regarded as such yet, and we really need to stamp some authority on this, you know, public consciousness on, you know, the politicians, on the media, et cetera, and make our presence felt, and really get the– the allocation and funding that we deserve.

And at the moment, we’re certainly not getting that. You know, there’s money going to health workers, but it’s not coming to Allied Health. And it’s time that, you know, we did something about it, and this– this campaign gives us a really good opportunity to make that change, And for very good reasons, you know, we just can’t have this wage theft go on anymore, you know.

Linda: And the outcomes for patients as well. I mean, there’s really good data out there in terms of your outcomes, both in terms of surviving a surgery and not having to be readmitted to hospital are, you know, exponentially better if you’ve had access to an Allied Health Professional, if you’ve seen a physio, if you’ve seen an OT.

But if the pressure is on discharge about getting you through that, you know, throughput and discharge, and they don’t really, you know. The mindset is, well, we don’t mind if you get readmitted because that’s, that’s a new stat. But that’s terrible from a patient’s point of view, and terrible from a family’s point of view, you know, your likelihood to fall your likelihood, you know, it’s– it’s enormous.

Craig: These are perverse outcomes from these rigid kind of structures and funding arrangements that are set up.

Linda: And what’s measured, and where only what is measured and reported is, we know, what’s important.

And that’s, you know, it’s costing us money as a community, where you could have for– for want of a little bit more funding in the right area, you could have seen those Allied Health Professionals and perhaps not been readmitted.

But let’s just push you through and look, sorry about that. But then you’re readmitted because you’ve fallen, or you’re readmitted because you’ve got pneumonia, because you haven’t seen a physio, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, really bad.

Craig: Didn’t Hannah Arendt say that bureaucracy is the greatest evil? Yeah, I think I’m pretty sure she did. Yeah.

Rjurik: Well, this is just the beginning. This is the first podcast, obviously, where hopefully we’ll be communicating with members. We’re going to also be releasing a Code Blue Two issue. [Craig: Hard copy journal.] Yeah, hard copy journal to get out to members, again, of the issues that we’ve– we’ve been kind of monitoring that they’re facing, and the sorts of things which we’re campaigning for. What else would we like?

Craig: What else do we need to express? You know, dinosaurs’ll be coming, you’ll have plenty of access to great T shirts, posters, all that kind of stuff.

Linda: Yeah, look, we’re probably going into a more difficult environment than last time. So I guess the good thing is is that we have better structures in place, we have more delegates than we did when we went into the, you know, the same point in the last public sector campaign.

But you know, look, it’s– the last one wasn’t easy, this one won’t be easy for different reasons. And so people are going to need to sort of, be prepared and get organized. So you know, if anyone’s out there looking at, you know, doing some training about how to do that, give us a hoy because we, you know, one of the things we won in the last Agreement was paid union training for VAHPA members, and we need to use that.

The difference between us having a good outcome and a great outcome is not just engaged members, but educated, you know, prepared, organized members. And that’s sort of something you have to work on, it doesn’t sort of just happen. So yeah, we want people here working with us

Craig: Hear, hear. Yeah, we’re just the office.

[Lively guitar outro music plays.]

Rjurik: So, um, thanks guys, thanks for listening, and we’ll see you again.