Alex Bainbridge, Hobart
Public sector nurses have won significant improvements in their pay and conditions after a hard-fought dispute with the Tasmanian government. The decision to accept the government's offer was made at mass meetings held around the state on May 14.
The nurses won a pay increase of 21.5% over three years and improved conditions, including an improved on-call allowance, a staggered increase in night shift allowance, provision of uniforms and a modest increase in the number of clinical nurse educators.
Australian Nursing Federation members had threatened to strike on May 12, which would have been the first 24-hour strike by nurses in Tasmania in 20 years.
The agreement in Tasmania will give public sector nurses in this state comparable pay and conditions to nurses in NSW, Victoria and South Australia.
In another popular victory in the health sector, services that had been suspended at the Mersey Hospital in the northern Tasmanian town of Latrobe have resumed. On May 10, full obstetrics services were restored. Two weeks earlier, in the wake of huge public protests calling for public ownership to be restored and doctors' strike action over the loss of services, the government had offered to bring the privately run hospital back under public ownership.
The details of the government's deal with Healthscope, the private operators of the Mersey Hospital, have not yet been disclosed.
The government is also conducting a review of hospital services in the region and further attempts to "rationalise" services are likely.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, May 19, 2004.
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