Nurses will go ahead with a planned strike in NSW after rejecting an interim wage rise recommended by the state’s industrial umpire.
Members of the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association plan to stage a 24-hour strike from 7am on Tuesday, in the union’s second major stop-work action since Labor came to power in March 2023.
The union wants an immediate 15 per cent pay rise, increases to night shift penalty rates and better conditions, commissioning expert evidence to find productivity and efficiency improvements to justify the deal.
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Industrial Relations Commission president Ingmar Taylor hasn’t examined the union’s argument for pay rises, but he recommended an interim deal with the postponement of industrial action for “intensive discussions” in the next four weeks.
“It would be appropriate for the hard-working nurses in the public sector to at least receive an immediate increase whilst their organisation takes the appropriate steps in this tribunal to seek what it submits are fair pay and conditions as reflected by its log of claims,” he said.
But the union says the state Labor government hasn’t expressed a willingness to move its position after months of negotiations, so the strike will go ahead as planned.
“Our hospitals are in crisis with increasing activity and increasing numbers of nurses and midwives leaving for better pay interstate,” union general secretary Shaye Candish said on Friday.
“It’s not acceptable for the state government to continue turning a blind eye to the pay inequity that is seriously undermining this state’s largest female-dominated workforce,” she said.
The commission’s recommendations will be presented to delegates at a meeting on Tuesday, but members had already rejected the offer in the past and the government needs to shift its position, Candish said.
Health Minister Ryan Park said the government would give back-pay and provide an interim 3 per cent wage increase if nurses agreed to halt industrial action.
“This is an opportunity for nurses to receive increased pay and patients to continue to receive care while the broader dispute is in the process of being resolved by the parties,” he said.
Nurses walked off the job for 12 hours earlier in September, defying an order from the commission to call off the action.
Premier Chris Minns said the government did not want to delay a deal but had to evaluate the proposed productivity savings.
“We have to quantify what the potential savings would be … when, often, workers in our public service come to the government and say, ‘we’ve got a better, more efficient way of providing the same service’, we’ll grab the idea and implement it,” he said.
The government accepted the commissioner’s recommendation for nurses to get an interim wage rise while negotiations continued for a larger increase.
“We’ve also said that if we can’t come to an agreement and negotiate an agreement with the nurses, we’re happy to have the independent umpire arbitrate,” he said.
Labor has offered a blanket three-year, 10.5 per cent pay rise, including a mandatory increase to superannuation payments, to all public-sector employees, a deal that falls well short of demands from various unions representing frontline workers.
