BY BRONWEN BEECHEY
ADELAIDE — Nurses employed in the state's public hospitals imposed work bans from February 22 in support of claims for a 15% pay rise over three years, after rejecting state government offers of increases which the union claimed were discriminatory.
A week earlier, on February 15, a mass meeting of over 250 members of the Australian Nursing Federation had voted overwhemingly to reject an offer of between 12.5% and 17% over three years.
ANF state secretary Lee Thomas has claimed that the offer discriminated against enrolled nurses, who were left out of the offer completely. It also failed to address long-standing concerns over acute nursing shortages, which had resulted in fewer staff caring for larger numbers of patients.
Bans on elective surgery were imposed at most of the state's hospitals, with nurses at other hospitals placing bans on hospitals' information systems. Nurses also voted to adhere to a ratio of one nurse to four patients, instead of one to 10, and to refuse to engage in revenue-raising activity, including patient billing.
The ANF's actions come at the same time as a wave of media publicity about overcrowding and understaffing in public hospitals, the Adelaide Advertiser claiming that over 2000 nurses had left the profession in the last 10 years, many through dissatisfaction.
The nurses have been supported in their stand by the Salaried Medical Officers Association, and the Advertiser, not normally a supporter of industrial action, called for the ANF's claims to be granted in a February 22 editorial.
On February 23, the state government issued a revised offer, including a new classification scale and an extra level in the pay structure for enrolled nurses.
Despite demands from human services minister Dean Brown that the union lift its bans immediately, the union said that the bans would stay in place until at least February 26, when a stopwork meeting would be held to consider the government's offer.