Queensland Nurses Stop Work

Date: 03 June 2002

Queensland Nurses Union (QNU) members working in public hospitals and health care facilities will start stop work meetings tomorrow (Monday 3 June) as part of their campaign to rebuild nursing as an attractive career option and overcome Queensland's serious nurse shortage.

Tomorrow's (3 June) stop work meetings will be held at the following facilities:

Logan Hospital 8.30am to 9.30am
Beaudesert Hospital 8.30am to 9.30am
Redcliffe Hospital 10.00am to 12.00
Cairns Base Hospital 12.00 to 1.00pm
Redland Hospital & Mental Health 12.30pm to 4.30pm

The QNU launched its Nurses: Worth Looking After campaign in March this year, with the objective of rebuilding Queensland's nursing workforce through:

· improving nurse wages;
· ensuring workloads are safe for both patients and staff;
· ensuring nurse education programs are appropriate and affordable;
· an improved and safer workplace environment; and
· the implementation of workforce planning strategies that address the needs of a predominately female and shift-working workforce.

The current enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA) negotiations between the QNU and the State Government are a central feature of the campaign. The previous public hospitals EBA expired on Friday (31 May). As part of a new EBA the QNU is seeking a range of improvements to wages and working conditions including:

· a six per cent per year pay rise, with the first six per cent starting on 1 June 2002;
· a six per cent wage equity adjustment between 1 June 2002 and 1 June 2003, which brings nurse wages into line with other equivalent health professionals;
· special qualification allowances of between four per cent and 7.5 per cent, as an incentive for nurses to undertake specialised training and education;
· the better management of workloads;
· reasonable working hours and overtime restricted to a maximum of two hours per day;
· uninterrupted meal breaks of 30 minutes;
· free, safe car parking at all hospitals and health facilities;
· five days paid study, conference and seminar leave per year;
· night-shift workers to receive a 20 per cent allowance;
· fourteen weeks paid maternity leave;
· locality allowance on the same basis as the State public service;
· breaks of not less than 10 hours between shifts; and
· the extension of the Remote Area Nurses Incentive Package to enrolled nurses and assistants in nursing.

QNU secretary, Gay Hawksworth, said this claim is very focused on the important issues and represents a serious attack on the problems driving people away from nursing.

"Unfortunately, the Queensland Government's response to-date has been hopelessly inadequate and will do little to rebuild nursing and overcome the nurse shortage. Its wage offer goes nowhere near bringing nurses wages into line with the increased complexity and intensity of nursing work. In fact, they have even had the temerity to try and take some existing entitlements off nurses.

"The nursing crisis has now reached a point in Queensland that services are being cut and, even in hospitals, registered nurses are being replaced by unlicensed staff. For example, in Queensland public hospitals official nurse vacancies blew out from 500 in 1999 to over 800 in November 2001," Ms Hawksworth said.

"Queensland Health took another snap shot of the situation earlier this year and over one week in February found that throughout the State around 2500 nursing shifts were not filled. Agency or casual nurses filled another 1200 shifts during that week.

"And these are Queensland Health's own figures. QNU members tell us that the situation is actually much worse. For example, in November last year the official vacancy figure for Royal Brisbane Hospital was 15, but our members say it was actually more than 100. Staff shortages like this are regularly causing the cancellation of elective surgery and other services.

"In fact the depth and breadth of the nurse shortage is profound. Shortages in no other occupational group come close to rivalling it. It is time for the State Government to properly address the issues causing the crisis. It can't hide behind claims of an international nurse shortage; it has an obligation to act in its own jurisdiction.

"That means acting on comparatively poor pay and working conditions, excessive and unsafe workloads and an entrenched culture within the health sector that undervalues nurses and nursing work. The simple reality is that in the current EBA negotiations we must get substantial improvements in wages and working conditions if we are to rebuild nursing as an attractive career and keep the quantity and quality of Queensland's health services up to legitimate community expectations," Ms Hawksworth said.

For further information

Contact:	Gay Hawksworth
Union:	Labor Council of NSW
Phone:	07-3840 1444
Contact Mobile:	0419-726 678

LaborNET is proudly created, designed and programmed
by Social Change Online for the Labor Council of NSW
[Credits] [Site Matters]