‘Significant impact on patients’: NSW nurses to strike for 24 hours

Thousands of nurses and midwives across NSW will return to the picket line next week, bringing the state’s health system to a 24-hour standstill for a second time in their bitter pay dispute with the state government.

The NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association (NSWNMA) this week rejected the Industrial Relations Commission’s recommendation to accept an immediate 3 per cent pay rise back paid to July 1 and commit to another four-week round of intense negotiations with NSW Health.

Nurses demonstrate outside NSW Premier Chris Minns’ office in Kogarah earlier this month.Credit: Janie Barrett

Health Minister Ryan Park on Friday said the government would accept the commission’s recommendations if the union called off the strike. The union refused, and delegates will not vote on the offer until the strike is under way on Tuesday afternoon.

“Members have already rejected this offer, and 3 per cent doesn’t go nearly anywhere near far enough,” said NSWNMA general secretary Shaye Candish. “Our members are furious. They don’t take industrial action lightly.”

The Minns government has offered all public sector workers a 10.5 per cent rise over three years, which nurses and midwives have rejected. They are seeking a 15 per cent rise in one year, something Park said was “simply not possible”.

Candish said the only concessions the government had made in four months of negotiations were agreements to install noticeboards in tearooms and ban nurses working night shift before starting annual leave.

Park dismissed this, saying he remained at the table and wanted “money in nurses’ and midwives’ pockets now”.

Tuesday’s strike, which will involve thousands of nurses rallying in Sydney’s CBD, follows a 12-hour stoppage a fortnight ago.

Park said hospitals were already making arrangements to minimise disruptions after the last strike led to the cancellation of more than 500 elective surgeries and dialysis and chemotherapy appointments

“This action is going to have a significant impact on patients. I’m deeply concerned by that,” Park said. “There wasn’t huge impacts to emergency departments last time. I am concerned that there may be this time, and that puts this type of action under a real spotlight.”

Union members defied the Industrial Relations Commission’s order to call off their previous action, risking fines in the thousands of dollars.

Candish said fines were still a possibility but that they would not deter members.

“This is not the type of industrial action that our members jump into lightly,” she said. “It’s really quite difficult for them to reach this point, and it demonstrates how ... frustrated and upset they are with the way that these negotiations have been playing out.”

The Minns government is also in a standoff with the rail union. It has offered free travel on passenger trains this weekend in a bid to pressure the union to drop work bans that will disrupt sporting events and potentially delay the conversion of the T3 Bankstown line to metro.

In June, nurses and midwives in Victoria won a 28.4 per cent rise over four years after initially rejecting their own union’s recommendation to accept the pay hike.

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