NSW public hospital doctors, members of the ), fronted the Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) on April 1, over New South Wales Labor’s attempt to stop its planned industrial action in support of its long-running wages and conditions claims.
The doctors have been campaigning for a new award for more than a year, after Labor lifted the wages cap in 2023.
NSW Mental Health Services psychiatrists, also members of the Doctors Union, have been campaigning for a 25% wage retention and attraction allowance to address chronic understaffing in NSW’s mental health services.
The Doctors Union said in January it is impossible to retain and recruit psychiatry staff and, unless Labor filled the 140 vacant psychiatrist positions, there would be mass resignations.
When the government refused to do so, 200 psychiatrists submitted their resignation in protest.
The Doctors Union is also seeking pay parity with other doctors interstate and has set a figure of a 30% base rise, still less than their counterparts in most states.
But Labor has repeatedly come back with a paltry offer of 10.5% over three years. By contrast, paramedics won a 25% pay rise in 2023.
After the IRC failed to get an agreement on an interim pay offer for all doctors, it ordered the doctors to call off a planned thee-day strike and not to take industrial action for the next three months.
More than 30 hospitals across NSW, including Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred, Westmead Children’s, Nepean, Hornsby and Wollongong, are among those where doctors have, so far, voted to either strike or take other forms of industrial action, such as bans on administrative duties and reporting that don’t impact patient care.
Ian Lisser, industrial services manager at The Doctors Union, told 鶹ý the union’s council met on April 1 and “overwhelmingly voted in favour of continuing our campaign for decent working conditions and pay parity with our colleagues interstate”.
“The mood amongst the union membership is one of red-hot anger at Labor for walking away from the bargaining table, the insulting pay offers and its refusal to deal with the understaffing and dangerous workload caused by under-resourcing and under-funding of health services,” Lisser said.
The Doctors Union wants everyone to be able to see a doctor when they need to and therefore says there is a need for more staff and a better resourced and funded public health system.
But, it added, NSW is struggling to provide adequate health services, with workplace conditions that have not improved for more than 30 years.
Lisser said premier Chris Minns and health minister Ryan Park have not even tried to talk with doctors to find a solution. Instead, they are paying short-term doctors (known as locums) $270 million every year to plug holes — about 1.5% of its total wage bill.
Lisser said the union is meeting with members department by department, hospital by hospital and district by district to finalise members’ industrial action plans, including planning pickets at various hospitals on April 8, with the largest planned at the NSW Health head office in St Leonards.
The union and Labor return to the IRC on April 11 to deliver closing submissions on a separate deal for psychiatrists in their pay dispute.