Healthscope wrote to unions today to basically say no to all our remaining concerns - they won’t improve the substandard wage offer and won’t address patient ratio concerns without relying on the Workload Consultative Committee.

You’ve told us your biggest concern is safe staffing levels. There remain concerns about the ability of NUMs or after-hours nurses, to increase staffing levels based on acuity during the shift, it is fraught with danger, is resisted, and sometimes even when attempted, nobody can attend at short notice.

Relying on the WCC clause to deliver immediate extra staff is unrealistic and will always occur after an unacceptable event, so will likely be too little too late.

1–10 nightshift ratios are dangerous, as your employer well knows, so choosing not to fix this is failing their obligation to provide you with a safe place to work. They don’t want an acuity assessment tool.

We’re asking for another bargaining meeting to understand why they can’t immediately commit to providing safer staffing and why their pay offer is so low. This is being rejected so far.

The Calvary Nurses Agreement that was voted up and is before the Fair Work Commission now will put Calvary nursing staff between 3% and 7% ahead of most Hobart Private nurses, and they can also salary sacrifice wages which adds about 3%extra value.

We won’t stop fighting for the best deal possible for our nursing members and neither should you.

We refuse to accept that the current nurse to patient ratio is safe, especially when acuity issues are dealt with dynamically, or not, and not pre-planned.

We refuse to accept Healthscope’s cop-out that they can’t afford to pay any extra because we’re asking for, on average, just 12 cents an hour more!