NSW and Sydney Health Worker Strike
When is the Health Worker Strike in NSW and Sydney? Why are workers striking?
Why are Health Workers striking in NSW?
Health Workers are striking this Thursday April 7th, against the unfair wage cap policy of the NSW Liberal Government.
The below is from an update from the Health Services Union on April 4th:
“Inflation is running hot and getting hotter, the government froze wages in 2020 (.3%) and stole members’ super increase last year (2%), meaning this year’s rise must be significantly more than 2.5%. We think something in excess of 5% is reasonable.
Despite our urgings, NSW Government has not come to the table. In fact, we can’t be sure if they’ll even ‘offer’ the legal maximum 2.5%.
In response, the Health Services Union (HSU) has called for stop work meetings to occur this Thursday, across all public hospitals and Ambulance facilities. This is going to make a huge impact. HSU covers 48% of the health workforce from Paramedics, Scientific Officers, and Cleaners, to Allied Health Professionals, Admin staff, HSMs and PTOs – just to name a few.”
Tess Oxley (pictured), is an HSU delegate and paramedic of 12 years. She makes it clear that workers are burnt out and looking to leave the industry:
“If we get a break, we spend it talking about what alternate career options are out there for us,”
“We’ve worked harder than we’ve ever worked. We’ve worked longer than we’ve ever worked. We are exhausted.“Instead of feeling like we’ve been appreciated, everything seems just like it’s getting harder, including getting a bit of respect for what we’re doing. We’ve had colleagues who caught COVID on the job and who’ve ended up on respirators and whose careers are over.”
Will services be affected by the strike?
Across the state around 20,000 workers will take stop work action for 4 hours. The union has worked closely with NSW Health and providers to ensure that there will be continued access to emergency care.
The below quotes from Health Services Union NSW secretary Gerard Hayes are taken from an article in the Sydney Morning Herald from April 4th.
“We’ve never done this before,” he said. “And we do it with respect to the government’s inaction and inability to respond or to actually deal with the health workers who dealt with COVID.
“We have done everything we can to work with government to get outcomes for our members and their communities,” Mr Hayes said.
“I see Mr Minns is nearly level pegging with Mr Perrottet, so I think the dynamics of politics in NSW is changed, and we are going to exploit that,” he said.