CAMPAIGN UPDATE #16
DAY 32 OF INDUSTRIAL ACTION
Congratulations to all St Vincent’s Private members for your courage and commitment implementing daily rolling stop work action from 13 December and the theatre and recovery day of action on 18 December.
Your action is unprecedented in the Victorian private acute sector and is being noticed and having an impact on our negotiations.
You are trailblazers in the private acute sector and you are inspiring members working in private hospitals across Victoria, with enterprise agreements expiring in 2025, who are watching you closely.
Have a great Christmas and New Year, especially if you are having a break. Come back recharged so we can continue this campaign for safe staffing!
STATUS OF NEGOTIATIONS
ANMF and Job Reps met with St Vincent’s Private Hospitals on Thursday 19 December to discuss key priorities for safe staffing including:
- supernumerary in-charge nurse/midwife
- night shift staffing generally
- specific areas of short staffing – neuroscience (all shifts), Level 3 paediatrics at East Melbourne, maternity assessment spaces and CTG booked service, post-natal, etc.
- minimum staffing levels in some areas e.g. the unsafe night duty ratio of 2 nurses for 18-19 patients at St Vincent’s Private Hospital, Kew. (Please note that ANMF supports the continuation, as a minimum, of 1:5 on PM shifts at Kew.)
- birthing suite staffing levels (to ensure staffing is consistent across 7 days of the week)
- Theatres and specialty areas – referencing professional body standards e.g. ACORN, ANZCA etc.
- returning the 0.5% to the wages offer which was removed in St Vincent’s Private second offer
- improved allowances and night shift penalties
- an extra week of annual leave for part-time nurses and midwives
- introduction of a change of ward allowance if redeployed from your home ward (redeployment from hospital to hospital was already offered on 21/11/24).
St Vincent’s Private management has agreed to respond to information requests from ANMF by 7 January and we are seeking another meeting the week commencing Monday 6 January or the following week.
STAGE ONE PROTECTED INDUSTRIAL ACTION CONTINUES, ROLLING STOPPAGES PAUSE
With three out of four of the St Vincent’s Private Hospitals facilities closing or reducing services, members will pause rolling stoppage action from 25 December 2024 and resume from Monday 6 January 2025. ANMF staff will be back visiting workplaces from Monday 6 January 2025.
An all-site members meeting on Teams will be scheduled for 2.30pm on 7 January.
Job reps will meet again on Friday 3 January at 3pm and each Tuesday and Friday from then on. A special shout out to our dedicated and amazing job reps. You have been brilliant over the last few months and we are so pleased to announce 20 new job reps joining the original 26! Welcome aboard.
Fair Work Commission has approved ANMF’s application for an extension of the 30 days to take all industrial actions on the protected industrial action ballot.
Stage one action can continue. These actions are listed at the end of this update.
MAINTAIN THE CAMPAIGN
Many members have asked what they can do to maintain the campaign during the Christmas and New Year period.
Here are four actions you can take:
- Write to the Herald Sun and The Age newspaper to explain to the community why you are taking protected industrial action and why it should be important to them. Use the Nurses and midwives speak out flier for inspiration and The Age letters-tips link below offers some great advice for a short effective letter. Contact details are:
The Age. Email letters@theage.com.au (letters should include your address, for verification, and name and be a maximum of 200 words. Find tips on writing a successful letter via theage.com.au/letters-tips).The Herald Sun. Submit your letter online via heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/letter-to-the-editor.
2. Call talk back radio
It helps to listen to the program so you know the best time to call in.
ABC Melbourne talkback 1300 222 774 or text 0437 774 774 (rates apply)
3AW talkback 133 693
3. Keep handing out the ‘Dear Patient/Family/Friend’ letter to your patients and have a conversation with them about why you are wearing a red t-shirt and encourage them to sign the online petition on the back of the letter.
ANMF has updated this letter which is available from the resources page via anmfvic.asn.au/stvprivresources
4. Keep taking photos and videos of members wearing their red t-shirts at work and upload them to your social media accounts and our Dropbox so we can share them via anmfvic.asn.au/stvsdropbox
ANMF ST VINCENT’S BILLBOARD CAMPAIGN
To support members an ANMF mobile and static digital billboards campaign will start over the Christmas and New Year period. The ‘St Vincent’s nurses and midwives want safe staffing for their patients’ billboards will take your campaign to the streets and maintain community awareness that your fight for them continues.
HARDSHIP FUND AND REPORTING PAY DOCKING THREATS OR HARASSMENT
Members are advised that processing of hardship form applications will be slightly delayed over the Christmas and New Year period because of the ANMF office closure. Applications stemming from the pay run on 25 December will be processed from Thursday 2 January but are unlikely to reach bank accounts until around 9 or 10 January. For the 8 January pay run, the processing will be back to 3-4 days, provided a pay slip or other supporting material is provided.
It is your legal right under the Fair Work Act 2009 to take protected industrial action in support of your campaign for an improved enterprise agreement.
‘Protected’ means you cannot be terminated or disciplined for taking industrial action. For protected industrial action items like shutting beds or stopping work, management still has the right to dock pay for the time of the stoppage e.g. if you stop work for two hours then they can deduct two hours pay only.
ANMF will support members who are threatened, intimidated or harassed or who lose pay as a result of taking protected industrial action. Where a member loses income as a result of protected industrial action and is facing hardship, the ANMF (Vic Branch) will support that member financially through our hardship fund.
During the protected industrial action campaign members have access to two forms to:
- report pay docking threats, intimidation and harassment via anmfvic.asn.au/stvprivreport.
- make a hardship fund application to be supported by your union via or anmfvic.asn.au/stvprivhardship
Please note members will need to upload pay slip evidence of pay docking as part of any application. In the event your shift is cancelled as result of you notifying your participation in the STOP WORK, also include the roster as part of your application.
Got a campaign issue or inquiry
If you need to get in touch with your ANMF Organiser please contact them via records@anmfvic.asn.au. If it is an emergency call the numbers below (until 24 December). See the email version of this update for Organisers’ mobile numbers.
St Vincent’s Private Hospital, Fitzroy – Mitch Hoover
St Vincent’s Private Hospital, East Melbourne – Mim Harrison (relieving for Mitch Hoover)
St Vincent’s Private Hospital, Kew – Narelle Hayes
St Vincent’s Private Hospital, Werribee – Hailee Love (relieving for Mitch Hoover)
Mitch (Fitzroy), Hailee (Werribee), Mim (EM) and Narelle (Kew) are the go-to people with any emergencies or issues until 24 December 2024.
If you have an urgent issue during the Christmas/ New Year period, an ANMF industrial officer will be available on the non-public holidays – so Friday 27 December and Monday 30 and Tuesday 31 December. Call ANMF on 9275 9333 and follow the prompts.
WHAT ARE THE STAGE ONE PROTECTED INDUSTRIAL ACTIONS?
- Delaying or restricting the performance of normal duties through a ban on the employer’s uniform policy or dress code, for the purpose of engaging with media, staff, patients, visitors, residents/patients and their families about the proposed agreement, with employees wearing, distributing and displaying ANMF campaign materials such as t-shirts, badges, written communications, stickers in support of the proposed agreement.
- An indefinite or periodic ban on performing work in clothes or uniforms which do not have bargaining campaign material and/or badges attached, except for any required PPE.
- Interrupting or stopping work to attach union campaign material to work clothing.
- A refusal to undertake receptionist/administrative duties.
- A ban on administrative tasks including, but not limited to, the:
- collection and/or entry of any data (that is not required by law to be entered into the patient record or related directly to patient or staff safety) and a refusal to record, collect or complete data required by the employer.
- A ban on noting or documenting start and finish times of consultations or procedures.
- A ban on the completing of any paperwork or electronic forms other than that directly related to the documenting of patient care.
- A ban on the scanning, documenting or entry of any item related to billing of clients.
6. A refusal to implement a major change to production, program, organisation, structure, or technology in relation to its enterprise and the change is likely to have a significant effect on employees of the Employer proposed by management, subject to the discretion of the ANMF Branch Secretary in circumstances where the Secretary is satisfied that if the change did not proceed, it may negatively impact on staff or patient safety.
7. A ban on providing information to management in relation to who is participating in protected industrial action.
8. A ban on attending or participating in management meetings unless fully backfilled.
9. Stopping work for up to 10 minutes duration to explain to patients and visitors to the employer the purpose of the protected industrial action.
10. Taking the full period of all breaks (including meal breaks and rest/tea breaks), even if this means not completing the full schedule of work.
11. Interrupting and/or stopping work to add EBA campaign messages to email signatures and screen savers.
12. A ban on sending emails unless they contain the following text:
Nurses and midwives at St Vincent’s Private Hospitals Ltd have worked through the pandemic while under enormous pressures.
The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation is trying to negotiate a new enterprise agreement with management on our behalf. The wages offer is acceptable – but wages aren’t everything. We are asking for safe staffing and workload standards and for these standards to be included in our enterprise agreement. We also want conditions that match our colleagues in the public sector – over 40 conditions that the public sector nurses and midwives enjoy but we don’t have.
The proposed offer from St Vincent’s contains neither staffing standards nor significantly better
conditions. If we don’t have safe staffing standards in our enterprise agreement – nurse or midwife to patient ratios to guarantee how many patients we each look after on any particular shift – then staff will simply make the decision to work elsewhere or will suffer from burnout. Retention and recruitment of nurses and midwives will be more difficult, which we believe may have a negative effect on the care we can provide the community. The health system relies on private health insurance and having a strong private hospital system available to make the system sustainable.
Without well-functioning private hospitals the public system would be over-loaded.
We ask for your support and understanding as we engage in protected industrial action in support of a fair outcome. See www.anmfvic.asn.au for more information.
13. Interrupting and/or stoppages of work of up to one hour per occasion to communicate with the media, post photos, change their background on electronic communications or write a message on social media about issues relating to enterprise bargaining (having regard to patient confidentiality and s. 141 of the Health Services Act).
14. A ban on working overtime directed or requested by the employer.
15. A ban on working beyond or outside ordinary starting and finishing times unless overtime is approved by the employer in writing and in advance.
16. A ban or limitation on any response to any work-related emails, telephone calls or other communication from St Vincent’s Hospitals Ltd, unless the email is directly related to patient or staff safety.
17. A ban on redeployment, i.e. a ban on a member being required by the employer to move from the ward (or part of the ward) they typically work on, to another ward (or another part of that ward). Members are free to decline redeployment as they are participating in protected industrial action. Members can agree to be redeployed but are equally free to refuse redeployment.
18. A ban or limitation on receiving or responding to any telephone calls, emails or communication from St Vincent’s Private Ltd management during breaks.
19. A ban on nurses or midwives undertaking patient post-discharge follow-up calls.
