More than 50 thousand nurses and midwives in New South Wales have walked of the job after pay negotiations with the state government fell through
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00:00The RRC ordered the union to call off their 12 and a half hour strike, but as you can
00:07see behind me here at Chris Min's office in Coggera, thousands of nurses and midwives
00:12have gathered out 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?
00:26I feel like I've been kicked in the guts.
00:29The 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.
00:46This 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 longstanding issue,
00:52but Labor governments fix these problems, so my expectation and the expectation of my
00:56colleagues is that Chris and Daniel and the rest of the government will take leadership
01:01on this issue and correct this injustice.
01:05We are working hard.
01:06We have endured spitting, punching, kicking, swearing, insults, accusations of corruption
01:13from vaccine companies to work through COVID and Chris promised us that he would look after
01:18us 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?
01:34We 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
01:43system 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.
01:53Now Collette Duff, the union is asking for a 15% pay rise.
01:57Now today's decision to go on strike didn't come lightly.
02:00Before yesterday, of course, the Health Minister, he said it's going to cause a lot of disruptions
02:05to patients in hospitals.
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
02:14and we have made sure that there is safe staffing back there.
02:16There is a skeleton staff.
02:18All 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,
02:32we wouldn't need to be out here today.
02:34I 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.
02:48More than 50,000 members are set 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.
03:01And it's across all the different generations 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.
03:13One girl rang her grandfather to apologise for voting Labor because it was a big decision
03:17for her.
03:19Do the right thing.
03:20Pay us our 15 per cent.
03:22It's required for us to be able to continue to afford to work as nurses.
03:28We will keep people safe.
03:30That is where we're at.
03:31That is our motivation for being here.
03:33We need the right amount of staff in the right place at the right time.
03:36And the 15 per cent is the first way to get there.
03:38OK, Colette Duff, thank you so much.
03:40Just a branch member from the Sutherland Hospital here demanding a 15 per cent pay increase
03:44for nurses and midwives in New South Wales.