New South Wales Health Workers to Strike on Thursday Over Wages

A clinical nurse consultant at the Gold Coast University Hospital in the Gold Coast, Australia, on Feb. 22, 2021. (AAP Image/Albert Perez)

Thousands of Australian workers across the health sector will walk off the job on Thursday in a state-wide strike across New South Wales (NSW), demanding a higher pay rise.

Health Services Union (HSU) said that with the latest inflation figures at 3.5 percent and expected to rise, health and hospital workers needed a pay rise higher than 2.5 percent.

The NSW government has a wages cap of 2.5 percent for its public servants, meaning it cannot legally increase the wages of health workers past the cap.

Health and hospital workers across ambulance, cleaning, admin, security, and allied health will be calling for the government to remove the cap and begin bargaining for pay rises.

“Everything is going up except their pay,” HSU NSW Secretary Gerard Hayes said: “Health and hospital workers are sick of mealy-mouthed rhetoric. We don’t need another politician thanking us for being heroes of the pandemic, we need a pay rise.”

The industrial action includes a four-hour stop work meeting from 10 a.m. at all major metro hospitals and two hours from 10 a.m. at all major regional hospitals. Paramedics will hold a one hour stop work meeting from 7 a.m. to vote on further industrial action.

It follows the industrial action of thousands of nurses in NSW who took to the streets on March 31, demanding a pay rise, improved staffing and mandated nurse-to-patient ratios.

The state Industrial Relations Commission had prohibited the strike, but the nurses’ union defied the decision.

Nurses and midwives hold placards during a nurses’ strike rally at NSW Parliament House in Sydney Thursday, March 31, 2022. (AAP Image/Bianca De Marchi)

Hayes said health and hospital workers were being “smashed” by higher prices and stagnant wages as the pandemic subsided.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine also pushed petrol prices above $2 a litre (US$5.50 per gallon) before the federal government cut fuel excise by half, or 22 cents a litre.

“NSW and the nation desperately need higher wages, and this needs to start in the NSW health system,” Hayes said.

Mark Morey, the secretary of the state’s peak union body, Unions NSW, said in February that they would carry out strikes until their wage demands were met.

“For as long as the wage cap ­remains in place, there will be strikes. They will happen next week, next month, and the month after that,” Morey said on Feb. 21.

The Australian Industry Group Chief Executive Innes Willox said a 2 percent wage increase is warranted in this year’s annual wage review, equating to around $15.45 (US$11.61) per week at the national minimum wage level.

“The ACTU (Australian Council of Trade Unions) has proposed a minimum wage increase of 5 percent. Such an increase would wreak substantial economic damage, destroy the jobs of thousands of employees, reverse the recent strong growth in full-time employment, and inflict lower hours of work on many part-time employees,” Willox said.