South-west paramedics fed up over amount of 'involuntary overtime'

He said more than 97 per cent of members across the state had voted to step up action.

Mr Hill said members working in patient transport, communications centres, air ambulance, triage services, rosters department, management and education would be banning practices and refusing tasks in the areas they worked in.

"This includes refusing to utilise automated processes, bans on information collection and sharing across departments, bans on booking taxis, bans on training and competency sign offs, bans on using digital systems for medication checks, tracking equipment and deploying resources," he said.

Ambulances across the south-west are adorned with messages and paramedics are not taking billing information from clients as part of the action.

A Warrnambool ambulance has comparisons over ambulance response times from 10 yeas ago.

It shows the response time was 11 minutes and eight seconds for a code one in 2014 and 13 minutes and 19 seconds n 2024.

"The biggest issue is staff being able to finish their shift on time," Mr Hill said.

He said often paramedics had to work for hours longer than rostered.

Mr Hill said paramedics understood some overtime was required when there was an emergency, but he said the involuntary overtime was happening "every day".

He said there were grave concerns there would be a mass exodus from the industry if conditions do not improve.

"A study completed by Swinburne and RMIT found one in five paramedics plan to leave the industry over the next five years," he said.

"The service will not survive if that happens."

Mr Hill said the actions would not affect patient safety.

"Labor boasts its credentials on supporting ambos. Enterprise bargaining is where they need to put their money where their mouth is," Mr Hill said.

"This campaign is about improving work/life balance and longevity in the job. It's disappointing that paramedics need to escalate industrial action to get a fair result and improve their working lives.

"Ultimately paramedics want to reduce the amount of overtime they are forced to work every day."