Nearly 1,000 nurses and midwives across St Vincent’s Private Hospitals’ four Melbourne healthcare facilities began ‘unprecedented’ industrial action this morning for better pay and safer staffing.
The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (Victorian Branch) has been negotiating a new enterprise agreement since June with St Vincent’s Private Hospitals’ management for its hospitals in Fitzroy, East Melbourne, Kew and Werribee.
ANMF members’ stage one protected industrial action includes wearing red campaign t-shirts, speaking to residents, family, the community and the media about their campaign, administrative bans, a ban on non-clinical paperwork linked to funding, a ban on admin related to billing clients and a ban on overtime.
ANMF (Vic Branch) is seeking pay parity with public sector nurses and midwives including new and improved allowances and more than 40 improved entitlements and working conditions such as superannuation on paid and unpaid parental leave.
It is also seeking improved staffing levels and safer patient care in the form of transparent, minimum nurse/midwife patient ratios in line with Victoria’s Safe Patient Care Act 2015, noting that the employer negotiated staffing ratios into the enterprise agreement for three St Vincent’s Private Hospitals in NSW in late 2023. The four Victorian St Vincent’s Private Hospitals facilities do not have ratios or transparent staffing levels, the ANMF says.
Public hospitals are staffed according to the minimum legislated ratios in the Safe Patient Care Act 2015 as improved over the last decade.
St Vincent’s Private Hospitals has made an offer for a two-year agreement that maintains parity with public sector pay rates but does not include the new or significantly improved allowances. It has also rejected the implementation of ratios or the inclusion of any of the public sector nurses’ and midwives’ more than 40 entitlements and working conditions achieved in the last two enterprise agreements.
ANMF (Victorian Branch) Acting Secretary Madeleine Harradence said private health insurance companies made a record $2.2 billion profit in 2022-23 and they cannot continue to make billions at the expense of private hospital nurses’ and midwives’ wages, conditions and safer staffing levels and patient care.
“It’s crunch time for the private acute hospital sector because it is a really difficult time in history to retain and recruit a stable nursing and midwifery workforce,” she said.
“While wages are important St Vincent’s Private Hospitals must address understaffing and safe patient workloads.”
In June, the ANMF secured a 28.4 per cent (compounded) pay increase for Victorian public sector nurses and midwives, new and significantly improved allowances to incentivise a permanent workforce plus significant improvements to entitlements and working conditions.
“The 2024-28 Victorian public sector nurses and midwives’ agreement is now the benchmark for all private acute sector employers,” Ms Harradence said.
“This is the first time St Vincent’s Private Hospitals ANMF members have taken industrial action in our union’s 123-year history which demonstrates how strongly they care about safer staffing levels which is not only an important workload mechanism, but we know leads to safer patient outcomes.”
