More than 50,000 nurses and midwives in New South Wales have walked off the job after pay negotiations with the state government fell through. A rally is being held outside premier Chris Minns electorate office in Sydney's south
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00:00The IRC ordered the union to call off their 12 and a half hour strike but as you can see
00:06behind me here at Chris Min's office in Cogra, thousands of nurses and midwives have gathered
00:12out here to start that strike today.
00:14They've not heeded that call and they're going on strike demanding a better pay rise.
00:19I'm joined now by the branch member from the Sutherland Hospital.
00:23Why are you here today?
00:25I feel like I've been kicked in the guts.
00:28The Labor government was elected on a promise of supporting nurses and midwives, treating
00:32us fairly, giving us a fair pay rise, implementing ratios, and they've just let us down.
00:37They haven't delivered on a fair pay rise, 10% over three years is an absolute disgrace.
00:43If we were men we wouldn't be having this conversation.
00:45This is a gender pay gap that needs to be addressed.
00:48Now I understand that things have been bad for 12 years, this is a long-standing issue,
00:52but Labor governments fix these problems so my expectation, the expectation of my colleagues
00:56is that Chris and Daniel and the rest of the government will take leadership on this
01:01issue and correct this injustice.
01:04We are working hard, we have endured spitting, punching, kicking, swearing, insults, accusations
01:11of corruption from vaccine companies to work through COVID and Chris promised us that he
01:17would look after us after COVID, he would look after us now.
01:20I'm not feeling looked after, neither are my colleagues.
01:23I think it's appalling that we've got nurses who can't get home loans because their HECS
01:27debt is so large, they've got no chance of paying it off on the current wages.
01:32Why would you do nursing?
01:33We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to fix this problem.
01:37We can offer fair pay, we can make the conditions viable for our young nurses to stay in the
01:42system so that we have a strong, healthy public health system that can look after the community
01:48like our community expects us.
01:50Otherwise, I can assure you it's a very long drive to Queensland.
01:53Collette Duff, the union is asking for a 15% pay rise.
01:57Now, today's decision to go on strike didn't come lightly before yesterday, of course,
02:02the Health Minister, he said it's going to cause a lot of disruptions to patients in
02:06hospitals.
02:07What's your response to that?
02:08Well, the first thing is that we do take, we take our code of ethics very, very seriously
02:13and we have made sure that there is safe staffing back there, there is a skeleton staff.
02:17All life-threatening emergencies will be taken care of.
02:20But if you're there for something simple, something that can be managed by a GP, you
02:23are going to wait.
02:26If the government was serious about safe care in hospitals and keeping the community safe,
02:31we wouldn't need to be out here today.
02:33I wouldn't need to take a 12-hour pay cut this pay to come out here and make my opinion
02:39and my values known to the government.
02:42They would have just done the right thing in the first place.
02:45This is just one of dozens of rallies being held across the state at the moment, more
02:48than 50,000 members are said to take part.
02:51How big is this movement at the moment pushing for a substantial pay rise?
02:54I've been working for nearly 30 years in the system.
02:56I have never seen people this angry and this determined and it's across all the different
03:02generations and across the different age groups.
03:05People are absolutely furious that we've been let down.
03:09I've got people back at work who voted Labor for the first time ever.
03:12One girl rang her grandfather to apologise for voting Labor because it was a big decision
03:17for her.
03:18Do the right thing.
03:20Pay us our 15%.
03:22It's required for us to be able to continue to afford to work as nurses.
03:27We will keep people safe.
03:29That is where we're at.
03:30That is our motivation for being here.
03:32We need the right amount of staff in the right place at the right time and the 15% is the
03:37first way to get there.
03:38Okay.
03:39Colette Duff, thank you so much.
03:40Just a branch member from the Sutherland Hospital here demanding a 15% pay increase for nurses
03:44and midwives in New South Wales.
03:46We're yet to hear from the Premier, Chris Mintz, who will respond to today's strikes.
03:50He said that previously that it's just a lot of money to put on the table and that would
03:53require a lot of other unions to demand a similar pay rise.
03:58We'll see what his response is later today.