Nurses and midwives at Epworth Healthcare have voted to accept their employer’s new enterprise agreement offer.
The offer was voted up by 74 per cent, with 76 per cent of total eligible voters turning out to vote. The agreement will now progress to the Fair Work Commission for approval. There is no defined timeline for how long this step will take, but once Commission approval has been granted, the new agreement will become operational seven days later.
ANMF (Vic Branch) congratulates Job Reps and members who attended every meeting and advocated for better wages and conditions for their nursing and midwifery colleagues.
What is in the offer?
Wage increases
Wage increases to align Epworth nurses and midwives with public sector wages by 1 October 2025:
- 1 July 2025: 5.0% (first full pay period on or after)
- 1 October 2025: varied increases across classifications to reach parity with public sector base pay rates (first full pay period on or after)
- 1 July 2026: 4.25% (first full pay period on or after)
- 1 July 2027: 4.25% (first full pay period on or after)
All allowances in the current Enterprise Agreement to be increased by 5% from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2025.
Additionally, new allowances to be introduced or further increased include:
- A new on-call allowance for on-call periods rostered on weekends and public holidays at $110 per 12-hour period from the date of operation of the Agreement. (This has since been altered to provide an improvement to the on-call allowance from Monday to Friday of a flat $90).
- An increase to the night shift allowance to $100.72 per shift from the date of operation of the Agreement.
- Qualification allowance increased by 10% from the date of operation of the Agreement, with a further 10% increase from 1 July 2026.
- Introduction of a Lead Apron Allowance of $9 per shift or part thereof from the date of operation of the Agreement.
- A $40 per occasion allowance redeployment allowance
- A $39.12 change-of-roster allowance for changes with less than 48 hours’ notice.
Leave
The offer includes several improvements to leave, including:
- An additional two days of uncertificated personal leave (total now five).
- An additional two occasions with a statutory declaration (total now five).
- Ability to use a statutory declaration for two consecutive days of personal leave.
- Two additional days of professional development leave (total now five) from 1 July 2025.
- An extra two weeks of paid parental primary carer leave from 1 July 2025, and a further two weeks from 1 July 2026, for a total of 14 weeks.
- An additional 6th week of annual leave (pro-rata) from 1 July 2027 for part-time employees who work at least 10 weekend shifts a year, or who are rostered on-call for at least 10 shifts per year.
- 20 days gender affirmation leave
Staffing
On safe staffing provisions, Epworth agreed to an EBA Implementation and Consultative Committee that will look at staffing issues and feature ANMF staff, Job Reps and HSRs, as well as Epworth management. The function of the Committee will be to consistently implement the EBA, and to address staffing issues.
Epworth also proposed a stronger and more meaningful Workload Management clause, where workload concerns can be escalated through the dispute procedure. This offer also included in-charge staffing in Special Care Nursery and Post Natal Ward, as well as an additional Grade 5 RN roster line.
While these additions did not meet ANMF members’ claim on safe staffing in their entirety, particularly on night shift staffing in many ward areas, it’s a step in the right direction that we can build on.
What’s next?
With the agreement accepted, the next steps will involve enforcement to ensure that its changes are actually applied and implemented in practice.
Additionally, because members’ concerns around safe staffing practices have only been partially addressed, there is still more to be done to ensure safer staffing for members, colleagues and patients. Critically, this work will lay the foundation for the next round of enterprise bargaining, which will commence again in March 2027.
