For the first time, ANMF’s more than 2600 Victorian Healthscope members have taken protected industrial action.
Beginning on 28 October, members’ action is in response to an unprecedented move by Healthscope to siphon up to 90 per cent of an employee salary packaging benefit into the organisation’s coffers – to pay off its corporate debt – rather than into the pockets of nurses and midwives.
On its own, this proposal would set an unacceptable precedent, but when Healthscope indicated it would only proceed with enterprise agreement negotiations if its salary packaging clause was included in the agreement, members decided enough was enough.
Plummeting pay and conditions
‘Ninety-seven per cent of Healthscope’s ANMF (Vic Branch) members voted to take protected industrial action because we are tired of Healthscope taking us for granted,’ explains ANMF Job Rep Jason Coggins.
Jason is an ICU nurse and clinical educator at Melbourne Private Hospital, one of Healthscope’s 12 Victorian facilities. He’s been with the service for 15 years, and in that time has witnessed ‘plummeting pay and conditions’ for staff and patients – especially since global investment firm Brookfield Business Partners bought Healthscope in 2019.
Since Brookfield took over, Jason says, ‘we have watched them chip, chip, chip away at all our conditions. Previously, we used to be $2 per hour ahead [of the public system] and then we fell right behind; almost 10 per cent behind the public in all pay categories. So when it finally got to [negotiations for] this current EBA, we really thought we were going to push for at least some pay parity with the public sector and other private employers – and then they hijacked our negotiations with their proposal for salary packaging where they keep 90 per cent of our salary packaging benefits to pay off their big, fat corporate debts,’ he adds, referring to the fact that Healthscope was placed into receivership in May.
‘We feel that it’s a corporate bailout, and we deserve better,’ he says. ‘I like it when I know my taxes are going to upkeep roads and schools and parks. I don’t want my tax benefit to go into corporate coffers where they won’t tell us what they’re going to do with the money. It will probably go to paying the CEO a big fat bonus.’
Beggars belief
ANMF (Vic Branch) has been negotiating a new enterprise agreement with Healthscope management for its 12 Victorian healthcare facilities since June, when the current agreement expired. Members are seeking market-comparable wages and conditions but Healthscope’s wages proposal would see their rates of pay about 10 per cent behind public sector from November 2027 until a new agreement is negotiated. During the life of the agreement the pay is behind comparable private acute employers, including St Vincent’s Private Hospitals, St John of God and Epworth (all of which also provide the full benefit of salary packaging).
In December 2027 the most experienced grade 2 nurse or midwife at will earn $2355/week ($61.97/hour) in the public sector and a Healthscope nurse or midwife at the same level would earn $2130.73 ($56.07/hour).
‘Healthscope need to negotiate a fair wages deal without asking nurses and midwives to donate their entitlements to pay off company debts,’ said ANMF (Vic Branch) Secretary Maddy Harradence.
‘It beggars belief that Healthscope think nurses and midwives should be sacrificing their entitlements to help bail them out when they are in financial strife because of the reckless pursuit of profit by private equity. The onus is on Healthscope,’ she added.
‘Healthscope nurses and midwives, who keep showing up to work and caring for patients while they face job uncertainty, deserve a fair and reasonable enterprise agreement without having to compromise any entitlement to salary packaging to achieve it. No other Victorian nurse or midwife has been asked to do so.’
No guarantee
Allowing an employer to use an employee benefit to support the usual costs of business has never been considered in Victoria. Healthscope’s proposal is part of its plan to convert to a not-for-profit entity in a bid to salvage the organisation from its creditors.
ANMF (Vic Branch) will never consider it appropriate to bargain away nurses’ and midwives’ salary packaging benefit – especially with no guarantee that jobs will be saved and no tangible demonstration of workload relief or a greater focus on patient care (such as provision of nurse/midwife patient ratios). It is unclear what ANMF members and the community gain in return, particularly given Healthscope have provided no commitments to the continued operation of Victorian facilities.
Despite a number of ANMF requests to meet to progress negotiations over the last fortnight, at time of publication Healthscope had not agreed to do so, preferring to contain discussions to the Fair Work Commission and to drafting the proposed agreement.
In an effort to progress matters, on Wednesday 29 October ANMF participated in a conference in the Fair Work Commission before Commissioner Clarke. Both the ANMF and Healthscope proposals were discussed. There was a further hearing scheduled for today, 6 November, and ANMF will update Healthscope members accordingly.
