Nurses and midwives at Northern Beaches Hospital begin strike action

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Hundreds of nurses and midwives at the Northern Beaches Hospital have walked off the job amid an on-going pay dispute with private health provider Healthscope.

Transcript

00:00This strike action is going to last until 8am tomorrow.

00:06Essentially what we're seeing is hundreds of nurses and midwives walk off just the job

00:11here at Northern Beaches Hospital.

00:13That's despite the fact that Healthscope runs a dozen hospitals right across the state of

00:18New South Wales.

00:19However, it's just this one here that's undertaking strike action.

00:22However, it is regarding working conditions for all the workers covered by the Healthscope

00:27agreement.

00:29There's an interesting thing here at Northern Beaches Hospital which is quite unique in

00:33that it is a privately administered hospital through Healthscope, however it's a publicly

00:37funded one.

00:38It was built by the state government and then subcontracted out at the time of its initial

00:43establishment to ensure that health services could be provided by Healthscope.

00:49Now nurses are saying that there are unreasonable expectations on the workforce and for quality

00:54patient care.

00:56They say that ratios are among their key demands here, wanting to see what has been agreed

01:01to in the public system now enacted here at the Northern Beaches Hospital.

01:06We want 1 to 1 in resus, we want 1 to 2 in HDU, we want 1 to 3 in ED and 1 to 4 on the

01:13floor, which are safety standards that give us the best outcomes for our patients.

01:20Are they the ratios in the public sector at the moment?

01:22Well they're the ratios that have been promised to the public sector.

01:25So the government has been very, very slow to roll them out, so no blinkers on there.

01:31But it's certainly what we want.

01:33There's also demands around pay and conditions.

01:35The union wants to see a 15% one-off pay raise as well as improvements to night shift and

01:41overnight penalty affordances.

01:44However Healthscope says its current offer of 13.5% over three years is a competitive

01:50and fair one that they have described as market leading.

01:55As for overall impact on services, it may be the case that Stafford is actually better

01:59than some days they typically see with the private health provider anticipating this

02:05upcoming action and ensuring they say that all of their services will operate fully,

02:10including elective surgeries.

02:13Typically when strike action like this does take place, a number of elective surgeries

02:17would be cancelled, however Healthscope said in a statement that wouldn't be the case.

02:23And with the impasse between Healthscope and the union, it's scenes like these which have

02:27seen nurses take to the streets here encouraging supporters to honk along as they beat their

02:33drums and make their demands, well they could be fixtures of the future as well.

02:38It could all end up being resolved at the Fair Work Commission, however for the time

02:43being, the union says it wants negotiations to prevail.

02:47Whatever wiggle room they might have up their sleeve in terms of compromises on pay for

02:51example to get guarantees around staffing ratios remain to be seen.

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