Australia, insurance, car, home, live, holidays

Thousands of nurses stopped work in February in the first statewide strike in a decade.Credit:Renee Nowytarger

The strike at Liverpool and Bankstown hospitals will last 24 hours. At Westmead and Westmead Children’s,Blacktown,Campbelltown,and Royal Prince Alfred Hospital nurses and midwives will stop work for 12 hours.

A union spokesperson said most other hospital branches had opted to walk off the job for four hours.

Sixteen branches also voted to undertake industrial action,but decided they could not “due to severe staffing shortages and a commitment to life-preserving care”.

All members of the union,including those who did not opt in to the strike,will attend a meeting live-streamed from Sydney Town Hall on Tuesday afternoon to discuss demands.

The state government promisedmore than 10,000 new full-time health staff in its 2022-23 budget. Despite the staffing announcement being made weeks before Tuesday’s formal confirmation,the union said it was still unable to obtain clarity on how many new nurses and midwives were included in that figure,and where they would be stationed.

In a statement to theHerald issued last week,NSW Health confirmed the figure included roles announced separately – such as 1858 new paramedic roles and additional palliative care positions – as well as 1,636 positions which were part of a previous four-year commitment to recruit 8300 health frontline staff,including 5000 nurses and midwives.

“The sheer lack of transparency is palpable. There are widespread staffing deficits right across the state now and there is no guarantee that the government’s ‘health workforce boost’ will be utilised to plug gaps in the staffing rosters now,” NSW Nurses and Midwives Association’s acting general secretary Shaye Candish said.

It will be thethird time members of the union have gone on strike this year,after statewide strikes in February and March. The union wants the government to commit to staff-to-patient ratios per shift,as has occurred in other states.

The union’s acting assistant general secretary,Michael Whaites,said the one-off ‘thank you’ payment of $3000 for health staff did not offset a “real pay cut under the new 3 per cent wages policy”,and members were not impressed.

“There are many who helped this state in its time of need that will not get this payment,those who burnt out and left,those in the private and aged care sectors.,” he said.

“Those members are rightly feeling undervalued.”

On Tuesday,the state’s public and Catholic school teachersannounced they would hold an unprecedented joint 24-hour strike on June 30.

with Kate Aubusson

License this article