Janet McIlroy (centre) and fellow Job Reps. Photo: supplied.
In mid-2024, City of Boroondara maternal and child health nurses and immunisation nurses undertook 33 days of protected industrial action after negotiations for a new enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA) stalled.
Council had twice put an un-endorsed offer to an employee ballot, and employees had rejected council’s unsatisfactory offer both times.
Job Rep Janet McIlroy was highly active and visible during the action – even calling into prime-time radio to share her and her colleagues’ story.
Janet has been a Job Rep at Boroondara for almost three decades. She loves her job but admits that ‘working as nurse in local government has its challenges’ because health services don’t seem to ‘have the same profile as roads and rubbish despite a long and strong history of highly regarded, valuable service.’
Nurses in the immunisation and maternal and child health services represent a small number of the wider council staff, she says.
‘We are seen to be different to everyone else in that we have our own award, our own wage structure and other nuanced conditions.
In some ways, we are a square peg in a round hole.’
Janet’s role as an ANMF Job Rep commenced by default. ‘As a somewhat reluctant coordinator of the newly amalgamated City of Boroondara in 1994,’ she says, ‘it was a given that I, a longstanding ANMF member, would play a key role in the associated industrial process. The compulsory competitive tendering (CCT) process by the Kennett government that soon followed galvanised my belief in the vital role of unions – especially at times when significant workplace and service changes are imposed by government.’
Soon after this, Janet formally became a Job Rep and she has remained in it ever since, finding that it ‘has had very little day-to-day ramifications’ on her usual work – though when it’s time to renegotiate their EBA she comes ‘out of the woodwork’.
In local government, she explains, ‘ANMF Job Reps have a seat at the negotiating table, giving us the ability to present and prosecute our claims directly to management alongside our ANMF Industrial Officer and Organiser and our fellow Australian Services Union colleagues.’
Janet has been at that table many times over the years, providing her the ‘opportunity to establish solid industrial principles; gain knowledge and understanding of other services and employees within the organisation; forge significant and productive relationships with other unions; build a gradual trusted relationship with management; and to mature both personally and professionally’.
For many years, it was just herself and one other nurse. More recently, two more colleagues have become Job Reps – and this has made all the difference.
‘The strength of a larger united negotiating team, presenting consistent and considered dialogue to management, together with member participation in protected industrial action was central to our recent success,’ Janet says. ‘The whole is better than the sum of its parts.’
Their success includes winning nursing staff the fifth week of annual leave (in line with many in the wider nursing and midwifery professions); abolishing a five-month qualifying period for further parental leave; additional leave that legitimises women’s health needs, and to support employees who have responsibilities as carers.
‘As nurses and midwives we know the protective benefit of a supportive workplace on the wellbeing of children and families,’ Janet notes. ‘In fact, we as team of Job Reps knew that our work was done when our CEO said that the outcomes only benefited women, families and maternal and child health nurses!’
For Janet, being an ANMF Job Rep is much more than just an additional, industrially focused, role on top of her everyday work. ‘Over the past 30 years, it has awakened and galvanised my belief in the broader value of unionism, the value of solidarity, the value of good and persistent dialogue to achieve change.
‘The everyday interaction that I have with families in my role as a MCHN further galvanises my belief in the inextricable link between the wellbeing of a community and a fair and just workplace. Advocating for industrial change in my role as Job Rep is an extension of my advocacy for parents and young families.’
