St Vincent's Private Hospitals members taking protected industrial action in November 2024. Photo: Penny Stephens
After a groundbreaking private acute sector protected industrial action campaign, ANMF members and their nursing and midwifery colleagues at St Vincent’s Private Hospitals in Victoria have voted to accept their employer’s most recent enterprise agreement offer.
The ballot closed on Monday 24 March. Almost 80 percent of eligible staff voted, and 61 per cent of those voted YES. The agreement has now been lodged with the Fair Work Commission for final approval.
The Commission will examine the agreement in detail to ensure all the legally required steps have been followed. While ANMF does not have any information on how long it will take them to do this, the new agreement will become enforceable seven days after Commission approval.
While ANMF officers, Job Reps and members all agreed that the offer did not achieve all members’ claims, it made significant and previously unthinkable progress from the first offer tabled last year. Importantly, it includes staffing provisions that can be built upon next time – including additional PM and night staffing resources with the aim of making ANUMs/AMUMs in priority areas supernumerary.
It also set the tone for bargaining at several other major private acute employers, including Epworth and those to come.
St Vincent’s Private Hospitals’ members have been trailblazers taking more than 100 days of unprecedented and often fraught protected industrial action in the private acute sector.
ANMF congratulates all members at St Vincent’s Private on their extraordinary campaign to improve wages, staffing levels and working conditions for all employees.
St Vincent’s Private EBA campaign timeline
July/August 2024
ANMF (Vic Branch) began negotiating with St Vincent’s Health Australia for a replacement agreement on behalf of our nearly 1000 members across their four Victorian campuses, ahead of the existing agreement’s expiry on 1 August.
St Vincent’s Health Australia had made an initial offer of a 2% wage increase in the first year of the new agreement, followed by 3% in each subsequent year of the proposed four-year agreement, plus a sign-on bonus of $1000.
They ignored members’ claims for safe staffing provisions to be introduced into the EBA.
Members rejected St Vincent’s offer.
October 2024
Despite members’ rejection of the offer, on 24 October St Vincent’s put it to a ballot of all staff regardless.
Staff overwhelmingly rejected the offer.
On Wednesday 30 October the Fair Work Commission granted ANMF’s application for a protected industrial action ballot.
November 2024
Following a ballot from 6-11 November, protected industrial action – the first ever taken by members at St Vincent’s Private Hospitals in Victoria – commenced on Monday 18 November.
Stage 1 actions included:
- wearing red campaign t-shirts
- speaking to patients and the media (writing letters to the editor, calling talkback radio) about the campaign
- administrative bans on non-clinical paperwork linked to funding
- administrative bans related to billing clients
- a ban on redeployment
- a ban on overtime
- work stoppages.
On 21 November, St Vincent’s Private presented a revised offer to ANMF members. The revised offer made some concessions on member claims but had reduced the initial wages offer as a result. It also continued to ignore members’ key claim for safe staffing and workloads.
It was rejected.
On 28 November, hundreds of members from across all four campuses converged on Carlton Gardens for the first of a series of stop-work rallies.
December 2024
St Vincent’s Private began standing down staff who refused redeployment. In response, on 5 December ANMF commenced an action in the Fair Work Commission in relation to a member who we believe had been unlawfully stood down.
With hospital management still adamant that there would be no safe staffing provisions in the agreement, members turned out in the hundreds once again for a second stop-work rally on 5 December.
On 13 December, rolling daily four-hour work stoppages began, across all shifts.
With three out of four of the St Vincent’s Private facilities closing or reducing services over the Christmas period, members paused work stoppage action from 25 December 2024. All other stage 1 protected industrial actions continued.
January 2025
Rolling work stoppages resumed on 6 January, and on 8 January members escalated their industrial action campaign to stage 2 actions – including nurses/midwives in charge refusing to take a patient load, and the closure of up to one in three beds.
St Vincent’s Private management responded by asserting that members’ bed closure action was unlawful despite ANMF notifying them (as per legal requirement) of this action before Christmas.
To prevent St Vincent’s Private Hospitals from continuing to sow doubt about the legality of members’ actions, ANMF applied for an injunction from the Federal Court of Australia, which was granted on 17 January.
ANMF provided evidence to the court that various St Vincent’s Private Hospitals management representatives had asserted to members that bed closures were not protected industrial action.
The Federal Court found that there was a serious question to be tried as to whether St Vincent’s Private Hospitals had falsely and recklessly misrepresented the industrial action.
St Vincent’s Private Hospitals was ordered to provide the Federal Court Order to each nursing and midwifery employee by 4pm Monday 20 January. They did so at 3.55pm.
On 24 January, St Vincent’s Private Hospitals management agreed to a series of intensive twice-weekly bargaining meetings for two weeks. Up until this point, they had only agreed to meet with ANMF six times since June. With ANMF members keen to focus on a resolution, as a show of good faith they agreed to pause bed closures during this time.
Members resolved to restart bed closures if St Vincent’s Private management did not reach a satisfactory resolution (or sufficient progress towards a resolution) with ANMF by 8 February.
February 2025
On 7 February, St Vincent’s Private management provided a revised offer (their third), which reinstated the wage increase removed in the previous offer but still failed to resolve workload, staffing and safe patient care issues. Members unanimously rejected this offer.
On 10 February, ANMF sent St Vincent’s Private a counter-proposal containing provisions for additional staffing resources.
On 12 February, ANMF met with senior St Vincent’s Health Australia executives from Sydney, including the head of private hospitals Patricia O’Rourke, head of people and culture Rebecca Roberts and the CFO. We provided preliminary costings of our proposal.
On 13 February, members attended a town hall meeting with St Vincent’s Private executives, and spoke up about the staffing/workload issues, excessive overtime and the ongoing issues of workload and inability to take breaks.
By 18 February ANMF began to see some welcome movement from St Vincent’s Private.
At a members’ meeting on 21 February, ANMF advised that it was expecting a new offer from St Vincent’s Private containing, among other clauses, some staffing provisions. This included a commitment to additional allocated staffing in the five priority areas, as well as other areas (referred to as Tranche 2). Further provisions included NUM/MUM on weekday shifts not to be ordinarily allocated a patient load, and ANUM/AMUM or in charge on weekday afternoon shifts (excluding public holidays) in acute surgical wards also not to be ordinarily rostered an allocated patient load.
On 25 February, after 100 days of protected industrial action, ANMF members voted to support the revised St Vincent’s Private Hospitals offer to be put to a ballot of all nursing and midwifery employees covered by the agreement. They voted to continue action, however, until ANMF officials and Job Reps were satisfied that the drafting of the staffing and workload clause was complete.
On 28 February, drafting was completed and members ceased protected industrial action.
