1,500 junior doctors in Tasmania may be owed MILLIONS in unpaid overtime

source

In Tasmania, Australia, a number of junior doctors are standing up for their rights now. They have been able to file a class action lawsuit against the state government. Their claim is that they were not paid for overtime work at two major hospitals, Royal Hobart Hospital and Launceston General Hospital.

This lawsuit is led by Dr. Emily Mackrill who was a former junior doctor at Launceston General Hospital. What she's saying is that many junior doctors worked long hours beyond their scheduled shifts, but they never received the extra pay they were owed. By the law, extra pay which is usually referred to as overtime should be higher than normal wages.

For now, the exact total money owed has not been published so I can't give you details on that yet but the reports say it could be thousands of dollars per doctor. Regardless of the amount, that money represents work these doctors already did. The long hours helping patients, saving lives and keeping hospitals running need to be rewarded fairly.

They may be Junior doctors but they are very important in hospitals, because they do play a role and eventually they'll become senior doctors. Remove doctors from the society and what do we have? A big problem that's what.

For me, a doctor's pay should not even be a problem because their work is too necessary to mess with them. Without them, the healthcare system cannot work. Most of the people in that department are young, just starting their careers and they usually face stressful work and long hours because of the nature of their work. When they are not paid rightly or fairly, it is straight up worker mistreatment.

The class action could include about 1,500 junior doctors who worked in Tasmania over the last six years. Each one of these over a thousand doctors might be owed thousands of dollars for hours they worked but were not paid. In as much as the report on the exact amount is not made public yet, we could be looking at millions of dollars of wage theft.

Based on the number of affected junior doctors, we can state the obvious that the problem was not necessarily a single mistake but a bigger issue in the Tasmanian healthcare system.

It's not just the Junior doctor you're messing with when you deny them of the right pay, Dr. Mackrill and other doctors warned that unpaid overtime can be dangerous for patients too. Think about it, when the doctors are exhausted because they work too many hours without rest, mistakes can easily happen. They're dealing with human beings not with machines, a doctor's mistake can be a patient's death.

It's expedient that Hospitals treat their staff fairly, not only to respect their work but also to keep the patients safe.

The Tasmanian Department of Health says it will look at valid claims supported by evidence. They also mentioned a 2022 agreement that tried to improve doctors’ working conditions. But clearly, many junior doctors still have not been paid fairly till now otherwise we wouldn't have this story come out now would we?

This particular story brings to light a classic effect, when employers ignore the law, workers lose money, families lose support and people become undervalued.

Screenshot of Tasmanian junior doctor gotten from this site sharing on the news too