N.S.W. nurses get 38-hour week
Sydney NZPA staff correspondent Christmas came early for the 27,000 public hospital nurses in New South Wales, when the state Government last week cut their working hours to 38 a week, and agreed to shelve plans to revert to hospital training. The 38-hour week brings the state into line with Victoria, the A.C.T., South Australia and Western Australia, with Tasmania set to follow suit in January. The only state which has not moved is Queensland, where negotiations have not even begun. The “’double-banger” for the nurses will mean that the state will now have to find at least another 1300 nurses to comply with the agreed 5 per cent boost to nurse numbers in the state. With a desperate shortage
of nurses throughout Australia, many of those nurses are expected to come from overseas, especially New Zealand.
In a judgement, the State Industrial Commission recommended that the 19-day month be phased in over the New Year pending a formal application from the Nurses’ Association and the Health Department. The decision ends more than two years of negotiations and occasional industrial action that included the rejection of a 38-hour only 1100 nurses would be employed to cover for the extra hours that would need to be worked. According to reports about 30,000 nurses employed in private hospitals will be eligible to claim a flow-on. The other present the
nurses could put under their industrial tree was the decision by the Premier, Neville Wran, to drop his plan, announced recently, to scrap college training of nurses and revert to hospital training in a bid to ease the nurse shortage. But after meetings with enraged nurses who went as far as marching on the state Parliament in. protest, he has instead instituted a package of moves designed to boost nurse numbers.
Apart from a pay rise, the package aims to recruit more nurses for key areasand to entice some of the 24,000 registered nurses now working in other areas, back to the hospital system.
Ominously from New Zealand’s point of view, the plan includes an expansion of the programme to import nurses from overseas.
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Press, 26 December 1985, Page 5
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356N.S.W. nurses get 38-hour week Press, 26 December 1985, Page 5
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