NSW nurses and midwives walk off the job after pay negotiations fail

ABC NEWS (Australia)

More than 50,000 nurses and midwives in New South Wales have walked off the job after pay negotiations with the state government fell through. A rally is being held outside premier Chris Minns electorate office in Sydney's south

Transcript

00:00The IRC ordered the union to call off their 12 and a half hour strike but as you can see

00:06behind me here at Chris Min's office in Cogra, thousands of nurses and midwives have gathered

00:12out here to start that strike today.

00:14They've not heeded that call and they're going on strike demanding a better pay rise.

00:19I'm joined now by the branch member from the Sutherland Hospital.

00:23Why are you here today?

00:25I feel like I've been kicked in the guts.

00:28The Labor government was elected on a promise of supporting nurses and midwives, treating

00:32us fairly, giving us a fair pay rise, implementing ratios, and they've just let us down.

00:37They haven't delivered on a fair pay rise, 10% over three years is an absolute disgrace.

00:43If we were men we wouldn't be having this conversation.

00:45This is a gender pay gap that needs to be addressed.

00:48Now I understand that things have been bad for 12 years, this is a long-standing issue,

00:52but Labor governments fix these problems so my expectation, the expectation of my colleagues

00:56is that Chris and Daniel and the rest of the government will take leadership on this

01:01issue and correct this injustice.

01:04We are working hard, we have endured spitting, punching, kicking, swearing, insults, accusations

01:11of corruption from vaccine companies to work through COVID and Chris promised us that he

01:17would look after us after COVID, he would look after us now.

01:20I'm not feeling looked after, neither are my colleagues.

01:23I think it's appalling that we've got nurses who can't get home loans because their HECS

01:27debt is so large, they've got no chance of paying it off on the current wages.

01:32Why would you do nursing?

01:33We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to fix this problem.

01:37We can offer fair pay, we can make the conditions viable for our young nurses to stay in the

01:42system so that we have a strong, healthy public health system that can look after the community

01:48like our community expects us.

01:50Otherwise, I can assure you it's a very long drive to Queensland.

01:53Collette Duff, the union is asking for a 15% pay rise.

01:57Now, today's decision to go on strike didn't come lightly before yesterday, of course,

02:02the Health Minister, he said it's going to cause a lot of disruptions to patients in

02:06hospitals.

02:07What's your response to that?

02:08Well, the first thing is that we do take, we take our code of ethics very, very seriously

02:13and we have made sure that there is safe staffing back there, there is a skeleton staff.

02:17All life-threatening emergencies will be taken care of.

02:20But if you're there for something simple, something that can be managed by a GP, you

02:23are going to wait.

02:26If the government was serious about safe care in hospitals and keeping the community safe,

02:31we wouldn't need to be out here today.

02:33I wouldn't need to take a 12-hour pay cut this pay to come out here and make my opinion

02:39and my values known to the government.

02:42They would have just done the right thing in the first place.

02:45This is just one of dozens of rallies being held across the state at the moment, more

02:48than 50,000 members are said to take part.

02:51How big is this movement at the moment pushing for a substantial pay rise?

02:54I've been working for nearly 30 years in the system.

02:56I have never seen people this angry and this determined and it's across all the different

03:02generations and across the different age groups.

03:05People are absolutely furious that we've been let down.

03:09I've got people back at work who voted Labor for the first time ever.

03:12One girl rang her grandfather to apologise for voting Labor because it was a big decision

03:17for her.

03:18Do the right thing.

03:20Pay us our 15%.

03:22It's required for us to be able to continue to afford to work as nurses.

03:27We will keep people safe.

03:29That is where we're at.

03:30That is our motivation for being here.

03:32We need the right amount of staff in the right place at the right time and the 15% is the

03:37first way to get there.

03:38Okay.

03:39Colette Duff, thank you so much.

03:40Just a branch member from the Sutherland Hospital here demanding a 15% pay increase for nurses

03:44and midwives in New South Wales.

03:46We're yet to hear from the Premier, Chris Mintz, who will respond to today's strikes.

03:50He said that previously that it's just a lot of money to put on the table and that would

03:53require a lot of other unions to demand a similar pay rise.

03:58We'll see what his response is later today.

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