SYDNEY — Nurses and midwives rallied outside public hospitals across New South Wales July 23-24. Members of the NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association are demanding an immediate 15% pay raise.
“We are calling for fairness,” Fran Cavallaro, who works at the Cumberland psychiatric hospital, told a rally of more than 80 nurses outside Westmead Hospital July 23. “A 15% rise in one year is essential to bring us to parity with nurses in other states.”
“NSW nurses are the lowest paid in the country,” Dave Russell, a Westmead nurses delegate, told the rally, “yet the cost of living is higher than other states.”
Russell had thought that after the election of a Labor government in New South Wales in 2023 their conditions and pay would improve.
But NSW Labor Premier Christopher Minns has only offered a wage increase of 10.5% over three years. The low pay here is leading nurses to move to other states. “The 15% we are asking for would improve staffing,” Russell said.
The Nurses and Midwives Association points to how the “high levels of exhaustion and a decade of wage suppression, coupled with rising cost-of-living pressures, have taken a considerable toll on the nursing and midwifery workforce across our state.”
Cavallaro told the Militant that many nurses like her are only just making ends meet. “Every time I get a bill I’m scared to open it,” she said.
Ramsay Health Care nurses at St George Private Hospital in Sydney stopped work for three hours July 25. Their wages are lower than public sector nurses, as well as at other private hospitals. More than 150 nurses and midwives rallied, demanding a pay raise and better staff-to-patient ratios.