Northern Territory nurses and midwives’ EBA vote closes on Friday

A new pay offer for nurses and midwives more than 15 months in the making is open to vote on. But it has drawn mixed reactions from health workers.

A Northern Territory nurse is urging their fellow health professionals to “vote objectively” on a new EBA.

The proposed enterprise agreement covers 2022 to 2026 and is open for nurses and midwives to vote on until Friday.

One Darwin nurse, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the current offer on the table was nothing like interstate nurses got.

“It’s being touted as the ‘best offer anywhere in Australia’, well that’s bullshit,” they said.

“The new offer is nothing compared to what they’re offering down south or elsewhere.”

The worker said there were incentives for people to move and work rural but they paled in comparison to what was on offer to move interstate.

Australian Nurses and Midwifery Federation NT branch secretary Cath Hatcher said the latest EBA was “not a bad offer”. Picture: Floss Adams.

“The problem is they can’t get nurses in the bush so they’re offering them $9000 across four years.

“In Darwin it’s $4000 across the same period, it should be offered across the board.”

In comparison, this year Victoria announced a $5000 sign on bonus for two years in the public health system.

Most of the additional pay increments were also being offered to a small majority of the workforce, the nurse said.

“Not everyone benefits from the EBA — it’s mostly N2 level five to seven nurses and there’s very few of those in a real sense.”

The nurse wanted to get the word out about the vote, which they argue should be open for at least 30 days, as they were competing with a 4 per cent increase in Queensland.

“There’s a lot of ill-feeling about this EBA,” they said.

“We need people to vote and we need them to vote objectively.

“(We need) better retention rates, better rates of pay and better respect at the end of the day.”

However Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation secretary Cath Hatcher said feedback was overwhelmingly positive from her perspective.

“We undertook a survey which finished about three weeks ago and about 85 per cent said yes and about 15 per cent said no,” she said.

“That’s a very good response, and it was a very good feedback to know that majority of our members did like the current offer.”

Ms Hatcher said the new offer included a 3 per cent per annum pay rise until 2026, as well as attraction and incentive allowances for all nurses in the Territory, up to $9000.

She said the union had been working on the offer for 15 months

“It’s not a bad offer,” she said.

“When we talk about incentives in other states like in WA and Queensland we can’t compete with that, we’re such a smaller jurisdiction.”

“If this agreement goes through on Friday then we’ll be the second highest (paid) directly behind Queensland.

“We needed to push the government to do that to remain in the top three.”

An NT government spokesman said the EBA was now in the hands of workers to vote on.

“The latest offer was put to ballot earlier this week and we are confident the latest offer provides competitive wage increases and satisfactory working conditions.”