Workers' Liberty

Melbourne, Friday 26 October 2007
Yesterday the government and the Hospitals Industrial Association backed down and have agreed to meet nurse pay demands.

Importantly, the nurses not only managed to retain the nurses to patient ratio scheme but extend it in a number of areas such as emergency departments and maternity wards. The government had wanted to put the nurse/patient scheme at the discretion of management as a first step to gut and eventually wind up the popular and effective system.
Nurses instigated bans on selected beds. A total of 1,255 hospital beds were closed during the nine days the work bans were in place. Hundreds of operations were also cancelled across the state before the dispute was resolved yesterday.

While the State Government argued that the offer was consistent with its public sector policy of a 3.25 per cent annual wage increase, the nurses said the agreement would in fact deliver nurses a pay increase of between 3.6 and 6.1 per cent, depending on their grading.

The average Victorian bedside nurse would get a 4.75 per cent wage increase over the life of the deal, lifting them from the lowest-paid to "around the third-top" of nurses in the country.

Nurses have had their pay docked under federal government WorkChoices for implementing the bans, despite working full shifts. Nurses voted unanimously to accept the deal, which also included a clause expressing their "dismay and disgust at the unprecedented intimidation and harassment and the zealous utilisation of WorkChoices laws".

Hundreds of people have pledged money to help more than 10,000 Victorian nurses whose pay is expected to be docked as a result of their work bans this month. Australian Nursing Federation (ANF) state secretary Lisa Fitzpatrick today said people had rung from across the state to support a union fund set up to help repay the penalised nurses.

"We won't be able to pay nurses everything that they lost. To do that we'd need millions and millions of dollars," Ms Fitzpatrick said. "People have started requesting additional help because of financial hardship, particularly nurses who are sole parents, or widows trying to support children. "Some are trying to support the entire family with an unemployed husband, so it's very critical that we start getting money out to those people as quickly as possible."

She said 10,000 to 12,000 nurses were expected to have their pays docked, with some likely to be paid for only one day out of their last two weeks' work.Doctors, retired nurses, workers from the Latrobe Valley in Victoria's east, the Australian Education Union and general community members were among those to pledge funds, Ms Fitzpatrick said. The union will decide next Tuesday how much it will contribute and will also be pressing Premier John Brumby to kick in some funds.