HEALTH professionals will turn down job offers and leave crucial positions in the Far North unless the Government betters its pay offer, a union warns.

About 100 health practitioners including occupational therapists, social workers, psychologists and oral health workers walked off the job for an hour yesterday outside Cairns Base Hospital.

Queensland Public Sector Union Cairns organiser Kevin O’Sullivan said the State Government’s offer of 7.5 per cent over three years in the current enterprise bargaining agreement did not meet rising living costs.

"The present offer by the Government translates to a pay cut," he said.

"With interest rate raises and the price of water and electricity increasing, people are very concerned. Everything is going up," he said.

Workers want a 12 per cent pay increase over three years to protect gains made in recruiting and retaining staff to the Far North, Mr O’Sullivan said.

He said additional workplace bans would be put in place and more industrial action would follow unless the Government improved its pay offer. It is health practitioners’ second stop-work action in the Far North.

Cairns biomedical technologist Daryl Douglass said he would continue to support the industrial action.

Speech pathologist Anne Kavanagh said a position for a Thursday Island speech therapist had remained unfilled for months.

Health Minister Paul Lucas, in Townsville yesterday, said the last agreement included "very significant pay increases" and the recent offer was "reasonable".

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