Hundreds of nurses and midwives at the Northern Beaches Hospital have walked off the job amid an on-going pay dispute with private health provider Healthscope.
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00:00This strike action is going to last until 8am tomorrow.
00:06Essentially what we're seeing is hundreds of nurses and midwives walk off just the job
00:11here at Northern Beaches Hospital.
00:13That's despite the fact that Healthscope runs a dozen hospitals right across the state of
00:18New South Wales.
00:19However, it's just this one here that's undertaking strike action.
00:22However, it is regarding working conditions for all the workers covered by the Healthscope
00:27agreement.
00:29There's an interesting thing here at Northern Beaches Hospital which is quite unique in
00:33that it is a privately administered hospital through Healthscope, however it's a publicly
00:37funded one.
00:38It was built by the state government and then subcontracted out at the time of its initial
00:43establishment to ensure that health services could be provided by Healthscope.
00:49Now nurses are saying that there are unreasonable expectations on the workforce and for quality
00:54patient care.
00:56They say that ratios are among their key demands here, wanting to see what has been agreed
01:01to in the public system now enacted here at the Northern Beaches Hospital.
01:06We want 1 to 1 in resus, we want 1 to 2 in HDU, we want 1 to 3 in ED and 1 to 4 on the
01:13floor, which are safety standards that give us the best outcomes for our patients.
01:20Are they the ratios in the public sector at the moment?
01:22Well they're the ratios that have been promised to the public sector.
01:25So the government has been very, very slow to roll them out, so no blinkers on there.
01:31But it's certainly what we want.
01:33There's also demands around pay and conditions.
01:35The union wants to see a 15% one-off pay raise as well as improvements to night shift and
01:41overnight penalty affordances.
01:44However Healthscope says its current offer of 13.5% over three years is a competitive
01:50and fair one that they have described as market leading.
01:55As for overall impact on services, it may be the case that Stafford is actually better
01:59than some days they typically see with the private health provider anticipating this
02:05upcoming action and ensuring they say that all of their services will operate fully,
02:10including elective surgeries.
02:13Typically when strike action like this does take place, a number of elective surgeries
02:17would be cancelled, however Healthscope said in a statement that wouldn't be the case.
02:23And with the impasse between Healthscope and the union, it's scenes like these which have
02:27seen nurses take to the streets here encouraging supporters to honk along as they beat their
02:33drums and make their demands, well they could be fixtures of the future as well.
02:38It could all end up being resolved at the Fair Work Commission, however for the time
02:43being, the union says it wants negotiations to prevail.
02:47Whatever wiggle room they might have up their sleeve in terms of compromises on pay for
02:51example to get guarantees around staffing ratios remain to be seen.