WA's nurses and midwives have reluctantly concluded their long-running battle with the state government over pay and conditions, with union members voting to accept one of two offers put to them.
Key points:
- Nurses have voted to accept the state government's latest pay offer
- The agreement will only be in place until October
- The parties will then return to the negotiating table
The Australian Nursing Federation has accepted a 3 per cent annual pay rise with a professional development allowance for all nurses and midwives between $700 and $1,400.
Members were not given the option to reject the offers and resume negotiations.
Federation state secretary Janet Reah said if nurses were given the option to vote no, they would have.
"We are worth so much more than what we've been given, however, we couldn't do any more in this negotiation and I had to bring it to an end," she said.
"Without having a signed EBA we would not get the enforceable ratios that nurses and midwives desperately need."
In an email to union members, Ms Reah said she understood "the frustration" some of them were feeling.
Public sector unions spent the latter half of 2022 at loggerheads with the government, drawing massive crowds to rallies and forcing the state to revise its pay rise offer three times.
The Australian Nursing Federation was the most aggressive and headstrong of the unions, even defying an order from the Industrial Relations Commission by organising a strike outside state parliament in November 2022 demanding a five per cent pay rise.
It later agreed to pay a $350,000 fine for the event, which resulted in hundreds of surgeries being cancelled.
A ballot which closed at midday Friday asked union members to choose between two offers, both of which included a $60 a week or three per cent a year pay rise, whichever is greater, and:
- a professional development allowance of $1,200 for certain levels of nurses; or
- a professional development allowance for all nurses between $700 and $1,400 depending on their level
The survey had the union's highest ever turnout for an enterprise bargaining agreement ballot, with 2,066 members voting.
The next highest turnout was 1,072 voters in 2018.
A majority of voters of 65 per cent agreed to option B, which offers allowance payments for all levels.
It brings overall pay closer to, but still below, the headline figure the union had been hoping for.
The new agreement will also include nurse-to-patient ratios, which the ANF had been seeking for years, across all hospitals.
Currently, ratios are only in place in Perth Children's Hospital's emergency department.
New negotiations nine months away
Nurses have been receiving the base pay increase since early last year after the government decided to start paying it despite negotiations continuing.
The agreement is expected to be registered in coming weeks but will only last until October because of the fixed two-year cycles for public sector pay deals, leaving only a few months before both sides will be back at the negotiating table.
Their experience is likely to be different this time around though with Premier Roger Cook last month scrapping the McGowan-era blanket public sector wages policy.
Instead, each union will be able to negotiate every aspect of their deal across both pay and conditions.
The ANF is yet to decide what figure it will chase, but other public sector unions have indicated they will push for a 12 per cent pay rise over two years.
Ms Reah said preparations would now begin for the next round of EBA negotiations later this year.
"We're now concentrating on the future — we've got a lot of work ahead of us in implementing nurses and midwives to patient ratios," she said.
The government has allocated an extra $2.8 billion, on top of its existing budget, for additional pay rises – but hasn't said what kind of percentage increase that could deliver.
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