Nurses launch work-to-rule campaign

BY ALEX BAINBRIDGE

HOBART — Public sector nurses are maintaining a work-to-rule campaign to win safer staffing levels in hospitals. Nurses are refusing to do unreasonable overtime and are making sure that meal breaks are claimed. They are also continuing their campaign for nurses with hospital-based postgraduate training to receive the same $2000 allowance that university-trained nurses are paid.

The Australian Nursing Federation (ANF) signed an enterprise agreement with the state government 15 months ago. The ANF claims the government has reneged on safe staffing and the postgraduate allowance, which were part of the agreement.

After the government stalled negotiations, the ANF took the campaign to the public with a rally in Hobart on June 1. On June 5, nurses closed 50 hospital beds to drive home their point that staffing levels were inadequate.

The ANF lifted the bed bans in line with an Industrial Relations Commission recommendation on June 7. ANF state secretary Neroli Ellis told the media that the IRC had endorsed the union's position on the postgraduate allowance. The government has not made any moves to begin paying it.

The ANF is pursuing the case for the postgraduate allowance in the federal court alongside hearings in the IRC. The Tasmanian Labor government has said that the federal court is the appropriate place for that issue to be resolved and has promised to respect the court's decision.

From Green Left Weekly, June 19, 2002.

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From GLW issue 496