Updated April 10, 2025.
New South Wales public hospital doctors, members of the ), defied the Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) and took unprecedented strike action for three days in the second week of April over a long-running wages and conditions claim.
Labor had sought to stop ASMOF NSW’s action through the IRC. After the IRC failed on April 1 to secure an agreement on an interim pay offer for doctors, it ordered the union to call off its three-day strike and not take industrial action for the next three months.
But by then, more than 30 hospitals across NSW, including all the major hospitals in Sydney, such as the Royal Prince Alfred, Westmead Children’s, Nepean, Hornsby, Liverpool, Royal North Shore and St George Hospital, as well as Newcastle, Wollongong, Lismore, Coffs Harbor and Wagga Wagga, had voted to either strike or take other forms of industrial action, such as bans on administrative duties and reporting that doesn’t impact patient care.
The doctors have been campaigning for a new award for more than a year, after Labor lifted the wages cap in 2023.
Ian Lisser, industrial services manager at ASMOF NSW, told 鶹ý that the union’s council met on April 1 and had “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 workloads caused by under-resourcing and under-funding of health services,” Lisser said.
The doctors’ actions were supported by several other unions, including the Australian Nurses and Midwives Federation, which said on April 10 that Labor has “completely failed our state’s health system”.
“When they’re at odds with our state’s trusted health professions, you know they’re failing our communities.”
A on April 9: “We can be rostered for as many days as required — up to 30, 40 plus days in a row. There are no protections for minimum rest times. We are working under dangerous levels of fatigue and it’s harming patients.”
“I have seen grown men and women break down in tears after having been on their feet for 50 hours, without sleeping, without a break, and they have another 24 hours to go.”
NSW Mental Health Services psychiatrists, also members of ASMOF NSW, have been campaigning for a 25% wage retention and attraction allowance to address chronic understaffing in 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 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.
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.
Both, however, suddenly sought urgent meetings ASMOF NSW once the strike was called, but failed to provide an offer outside the government “wages cap” offer. 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.
The union and Labor will return to the IRC on April 11 to deliver closing submissions on a separate pay deal for psychiatrists in their dispute.
Meanwhile, Lisser said the union has received an influx of new members, with 3084 people joining over the six days before the strike began.
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