Acknowledging and celebrating International Day of the Midwife and International Nurses Day

International Day of the Midwife and International Nurses Day are traditionally about celebrating our professions. This has, for many members, been a somewhat difficult ask during recent years.

It remains important, however, to acknowledge and, yes, celebrate the things that make our professions unique, vital and extraordinary. This year, while acknowledging and celebrating, it is important to remember our worth, and many of our members – those in the general public sector – will also be campaigning for the state government, in its capacity as the funder of the system, to also acknowledge and celebrate the essential nature of our work, and to reward us appropriately by ensuring an EBA outcome that retains, recruits and rebuilds the workforces.

In many ways, nursing/midwifery and unionism are similar: all involve working collaboratively for the best outcomes. Working together collectively is especially important in female-dominated industries such as ours, to stand up for the rights of women as workers, as patients, as people.

In Victoria, there have never been more women, and men, in our workforces to make this stand. The most recent Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (NMBA) registration figures – December 2023 – reveal that there are now more nurses and midwives registered, and practising, in Victoria than in any other state or territory, with 125,703 Victorian nurses and midwives practising to NSW’s 123,201.

NMBA registration figures, December 2023

Our combined workforce is officially the largest in the country.

Despite this, filling rosters remains challenging because many nurses and midwives are reducing their permanent hours and moving to casual employment.

This rapid and continuing casualisation of the workforces in turn leads employers to default to greater reliance on overtime, and an increasing reliance on an agency workforce. This has a detrimental effect on all of us.

Many of the asks in the 2024 members’ log of claims are designed specifically to reverse this casualisation.

We have experienced this before, in the 1990s, and were successful in turning it around then; working together, we can succeed again – and that’s something worth celebrating.

So while we are collectively standing up for our professions during this EBA campaign, don’t forget to stand up for yourselves on Friday 5 May and Friday 12 May to acknowledge and celebrate your individual contributions as midwives and nurses, respectively.

To help encourage your workplaces to mark the days, ANMF (Vic Branch) has sent beautiful posters, produced by our in-house graphic designer, to reps to display in their workplace.