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Queensland nurses and midwives are ready to walk off the job, as frontline workers take action to secure better wages and working conditions for the first time in more than 20 years.
On Tuesday morning, up to 48,000 unionised Queensland Health nurses and midwives launched stage 2 protected industrial action, including refusing overtime without four hours’ notice and completing tasks such as logging patient details, emptying bins and making beds.
Union representatives speak outside the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital as they take industrial action over ongoing wage negotiations.Credit: Courtney Kruk
Queensland Nurses and Midwives’ Union secretary Sarah Beaman said frontline health workers were angry at an offer put forward and were “over the government’s stalling tactics and gaslighting”.
“[Nurses and midwives] are at breaking point, and they’ve had enough,” Beaman said.
“They are angry at the offer put forward that attempts to erode paying conditions [and] that does not maintain nation-leading wages.
“They are angry at the disrespect … [and] the misinformation.”
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The QNMU has been in negotiations with Queensland Health since the beginning of the year, and has met with the department 36 times.
Nurses and midwives commenced stage 1 action in June, which the union said pushed the government back to the bargaining table for two weeks of intensive negotiations.
But on the final day, they said Queensland Health “pulled the rug out from under us”, walking back some conditions that had already been negotiated.
“By the end of the bargaining that we’d undertaken in those three months, there were over 50 items that were principally agreed by nurses and midwives from Queensland Health and the QNMU,” Beaman said.
“Many of those items were actually no cost or low cost.
“What [the government] is proposing to do is remove the protection on a number of policies … there is absolutely no reason for them to remove the protections on these policies.”
Examples of such changes included the removal of protections around parental leave entitlements, flexible work arrangements and the removal of consultation rights.
The union has rejected the LNP’s current offer of an 11 per cent pay increase over three years, insisting it would leave more than 66 per cent of the workforce behind Victorian counterparts, and as such would break the government’s election promise to deliver nation-leading wages.
They are instead pushing for a 13 per cent increase over the same period.
“If nurses and midwives do not receive nation-leading wages and conditions, they will fall behind for the first time in 15 years,” Beaman said.
On Monday, Health Minister Tim Nicholls said the government remained at the negotiating table, but criticised the union for rejecting previous offers.
“On the Friday of budget week after we had completed 36 rounds of negotiations, they were seeking double time for overtime, something that we offered to them on the 23rd of May,” Nicholls said.
“We respect their right to take protected industrial action, but we also want to make it abundantly clear that we have negotiated in good faith.”
Beaman said there were “so many caveats” to the government’s offer and called their rhetoric “misleading”.
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