SYDNEY — Some 400 nurses, members of the New South Wales Nurses and Midwives Association, marched on the Ramsay Health Care company’s annual meeting here Nov. 26 to press their demands for a 20% pay raise over three years and increased staffing levels. More than 1,000 nurses joined a 24-hour strike at 17 hospitals across the state that day.
“This is the first strike at Ramsay,” Suanne Muir, marching with a contingent from the Baringa Private Hospital in Coffs Harbour, some 330 miles north of Sydney, told the Militant. “Nurses are doing double shifts all the time,” she said, and “the bullying is relentless.” Muir said she is now working on casual contracts in the public hospitals, where she earns 10 Australian dollars ($6.45) an hour more than at Ramsay, even though this involves traveling farther away from home.
Ramsay, the biggest private hospital chain in Australia, made AU$900 million profit last year. The nurses association has been negotiating for a new agreement with the company in New South Wales for 20 months, with workers voting down two pay offers. Nurses at several Ramsay hospitals have been organizing protest walkouts since July.
“People think they are getting better care at a private hospital — they’re not,” said another nurse at the rally. “We’re paid less than nurses at a public hospital and the staffing ratios are worse. They’re a business.”