Strikes spread to private hospitals

St Vincent’s Health Group nurses and midwives join statewide push for staffing ratios and fair pay.

Nurses and midwives at two leading Sydney private hospitals have taken strike action in support of staffpatient ratios and pay rises that match inflation.

In December, nurses and midwives held one-hour work stoppages at the Mater Hospital in North Sydney and St Vincent’s Private Hospital (SVPH) in Darlinghurst, and put bans on overtime and domestic duties.

The industrial action is known as “protected” because it was endorsed by NSWNMA members in a secret ballot authorised by the Fair Work Commission.

Members voted overwhelmingly (97 per cent at the Mater and 96 per cent at SVPH) to approve “an unlimited number of stoppages of work of between 15 minutes and four hours, while maintaining safe patient care.”

NSWNMA General Secretary, Shaye Candish, described the strike as historic.

“You are breaking new ground. We think your hospital hasn’t taken industrial action for more than 30 years,” she told a rally of nurses and midwives outside SVPH in Darlinghurst.

Shaye said the reputations of SVPH and the Mater as “hospitals of excellence” were upheld only by “nurses’ continuing goodwill in the face of chronic understaffing, fatigue and burnout.”

“Ratios are not an unreasonable request – they are a necessity to deliver safe and reasonable care to your patients and to your community.

“Other state governments and private employers across the country have accepted that ratios are needed to deliver quality health care, yet here in NSW our patients are falling behind.

“Your action is part of a statewide movement of nurses and midwives rising up and demanding that they no longer be taken for granted.”

The ballot came after negotiations with St Vincent’s Health Australia (SVHA) for new enterprise agreements were deadlocked.

The NSWNMA is calling for an annual pay rise of 5.5 per cent, or equal to inflation as measured by the consumer price index – whichever is greater.

The SVHA pay offer of about 10 per cent over three years would be a cut to real wages, with inflation now running at 7.8 per cent.

The company also refused to bargain on ratios, despite another private hospital, Sydney Adventist Hospital, agreeing to ratios last year.

Shaye said nurses regarded SVHA’s “incomplete and insulting” offer as an erosion of the gains they made in previous enterprise agreements. n

First private hospital strike for 12 years

The pre-Christmas strike at St Vincent’s Health Group hospitals in NSW appears to be the first by nurses at any NSW private hospital since 2011. In that year, five Macquarie Private hospitals (Delmar, Manly Waters, Minchinbury Community, Eastern Suburbs and President Private) voted to strike for 24 hours after long negotiations.

Also in 2011, NSWNMA members at Shellharbour Private Hospital gained approval to take protected industrial action. The strike was called off after management made a favourable offer.

Nurses and midwives to strike again

In January, NSWNMA branches at both hospitals voted to strike again in February after an unsatisfactory meeting with their employer, SVHA. Members said SVHA failed to improve on its earlier inadequate offer for a new enterprise agreement.

This was despite NSWNMA reps from various departments providing “very compelling arguments” to support minimum staffing, shift by shift, said Kate Westwood, NSWNMA branch secretary at SVPH in Darlinghurst. She said NSWNMA reps made it “abundantly clear just how stressful the workloads are” and that nurses were rarely able to leave patient care to attend education sessions. Also, SVHA had still not addressed all claims made by the union in its log of claims submitted in September.