The first strike from Health Services Union workers in 108 years isn't because workers want a pay rise - it's because they want to do their job.
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That's according to one HSU member who will strike on Wednesday, August 1.
He spoke anonymously, fearing he would lose his job if he put his name to his comments.
"I feel like the last man standing," he said.
"Fifty per cent [of Shoalhaven District Memorial Hospital security] staff are off work with injuries they've suffered on the job."
He said he was routinely assaulted, but his primary concern was for other hospital staff and patients.
"If one of the dementia patients is going off, they may have punched a nurse - that happens on a daily basis," he said.
"You have to be gentle with these old guys, but in their mind someone has just broken into their house.
"[Often] we can't sedate them, so you might be there for a couple of hours restraining them. It's exhausting."
He said often patients with mental health problems had to be restrained for hours without sedation.
"We don't have proper facilities for when the police bring in a mental health patient," he said.
"We just have a little room in the emergency department where we put them, in full view of old people, little kids.
"They get seen by one of our doctors, but we can't lift the schedule [let them leave] until they've been seen over video by a psych registrar from Shellharbour."
For a patient brought to the hospital last week, that meant eight hours "trapped in that little room".
Mental health patients cannot be sedated until they have had the video interview.
The impact on sick children haunted him. After an incident with a patient on drugs, a mother confided to him that her son, in the childrens ward, was frightened the patient was going to kill him.
"If you're [at work] on your own and there's someone going off in the emergency department, we just let them go and ring the police," he said.
"It feels crap."
A statement from the Illawarra-Shoalhaven Health District which claimed all security cameras at the hospital were operational was "a lie", he said.
And cameras aren't the only piece of essential equipment security are working without.
He said their radios were out of action for seven months, but had recently been fixed, and phones used by security staff had limited service outside the main hospital building.
"None of the cameras on the exterior at the front of the hospital work, and haven't since renovations, maybe two years ago," he said.
"The one on parking, you can only see six spots."
The laundry list of inadequacies stems from a sense of apathy at a ministerial level, the HSU member believes.
"It feels like people higher up don't care," he said.
"The General Manager can only work with what he gets.
"We had this Anderson Review - they didn't come out to our hospital or speak to anyone."
He said union members just want the tools to keep themselves, and others, safe.
"We need three staff on each shift at the hospital, not two, so if someone calls in sick it's not a major drama," he said.
"We'd like a more proactive approach to sedating mental health or dementia patients when they're a danger.
"We'd like the psych registrars at Shellharbour to review mental health patients within an hour or two.
"We'd like the CCTV working.
"It's not about money, it's just about wanting to feel safe when we go to work."
