Hundreds of health workers warned of a crumbling health system as they rallied for the second time this month to push for higher wages.
"I love my job. I enjoy my job. But the problem here is ... I cannot afford [it] anymore," patient care assistant Josie Mogoum said at the stop work meeting.
"I want to put food on the table. Some days, my family, we have to live with bread."
Undervalued and overworked was the sentiment shared by the rally goers gathered outside Royal Perth Hospital to push for the state government to change its wages policy.
Public sector wages have been capped at 2.75 per cent, or 2.5 per cent with a $1,000 sign-on bonus.
The health workers, mostly donning masks and uniforms, said it was creating a class of "working poor".
"We're creating people that are working full time and cannot afford to live in Western Australia," United Workers Union public sector coordinator Kevin Sneddon said.
"Our members left their houses this morning with bills pinned to an empty fridge. Bills they haven't been able to pay, fridges that they haven't been able to fill."
It's the second time unions have rallied this month to push for a better wages policy.
The stop work meeting is the second in a plan of four industrial actions, culminating in a strike outside Parliament House on August 17.
Premier chasing 'post-COVID' normality
Premier Mark McGowan was abrupt in his response to the stop work meeting, saying "people having a meeting, I don't think it's a problem".
He acknowledged the pressures facing the hospital system country-wide but gave little hope for health workers on the front lines of the pandemic.
"At the national cabinet meetings, it's the main subject of conversation: the huge pressure on our hospitals around Australia," he said.
The only advice he had was for "people who are close contacts or who are unwell to test, and if positive, to isolate", and "strongly encouraging" masks indoors.
Outside the health system, the Premier has encouraged a "post-COVID" life.
"We're open for business. We've had a very, very soft landing out of COVID," he added, as he welcomed football teams arriving in WA for Perth's Festival of International Football.
"We've put a huge effort into promoting the state for tourists, for getting people to come here and work, for sporting teams to come."
But amid Mr McGowan's push for a life beyond the pandemic, frontline health workers continue wading into daily new highs of hospital admissions with COVID, and record numbers of patients requiring intensive care.
Mr McGowan admitted case numbers were likely being heavily under-reported, but WA still saw 7,901 new cases today, the state's highest recorded figure in more than a month.
There are 457 people in hospital with COVID, with 22 in intensive care.
During the peak of the last Omicron wave in May, the state government pointed at the number of hospital and ICU admissions as the key figures to watch.
But as WA breaches all-time highs in those areas, the government has taken a relatively hands-off approach regarding additional public health measures.
Mr Sneddon said the state government's approach to "let it run" meant health workers would have to continue enduring the pressures of a system struggling to cope.
"For the workers that are going to turn up today, this has been their life for the last two-and-a-half years," he said.
"Nobody who's here today has worked from home. All of these workers have turned up every day."
Nurses' union calls for mask mandate
The Australian Nursing Federation said the government's public health messaging of strongly encouraging mask wearing was not enough to help the increasingly stressed hospital system.
"If you valued our nurses, what you'd be doing as a government is taking steps to reduce the number of people in our hospitals who have got COVID," state secretary Mark Olson said.
The WA Department of Education has issued a joint letter with bodies representing Catholic and independent schools urging students to wear masks.
"We ask that your child wears a mask to school to keep our schools as safe as possible," the letter reads.
While mask wearing is still not mandated, the letter did not note that mask wearing is optional.
Mr Olson said the refusal to put in place stricter public health measures would soon lead to more issues in hospitals.
"It is going to be years before we clear the backlog of elective surgery. It is piling up," he said.
"Simply because the government won't take [the] politically hard decision and say to people, let's bring back masks, let's bring back social distancing."
