SA Employment Tribunal approves industrial action by nurses over demands for extra hospital beds
NURSES are vowing to cancel overnight elective surgeries from Thursday, after a resolution in the state’s employment tribunal approved their industrial action.
NURSES are vowing to cancel overnight elective surgeries from Thursday, after a resolution in the state’s employment tribunal approved their industrial action.
But the State Government claims SA Employment Tribunal Commissioner Chris Aikens’ ruling means SA Health must agree to any changes to scheduled surgeries — which it will refuse to do.
Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation state secretary Elizabeth Dabars said nurses would hold rallies outside metropolitan hospitals from Monday, and start the cancellation of some overnight elective surgeries from Thursday.
The first rally would be held outside the Royal Adelaide Hospital on Monday, with further action scheduled at the Flinders Medical Centre on Tuesday and the Lyell McEwin Hospital on Wednesday.
Prof Dabars denied the ruling prevented surgeries from being cancelled, saying the Government’s claim was “absolute rubbish”.
But Health Minister Stephen Wade claimed the ruling was a “win for patients”.
“The commissioner deem-ed the industrial action originally proposed by the ANMF was a risk to patient safety, and has ordered that any action taken next week must not harm patients,” Mr Wade said.
SA Health took the union to the employment tribunal on Friday because of concerns the planned industrial action would have “significant clinical and safety impacts”.
A resolution was not reached during a marathon session on Friday, but both parties claimed victory after talks finally concluded late on Saturday night.
Commissioner Aikens ruled tier one and two elective surgeries would go ahead, but Prof Dabars said nurses had never planned to cancel them.
“In no way would we be cancelling someone’s procedure for cancer removal, which is technically classed as elective surgery,” Prof Dabars said.
“We had always made a fundamental promise that we would not be undertaking any action which compromised patient safety.”
Unions representing nurses, doctors and ambulance staff are seeking 50 extra beds across the system to ease pressure on metropolitan emergency departments.
They argue action taken by Mr Wade — opening 30 beds in country hospitals and agreeing to open 20 new beds in private hospitals — is not enough.