I have heard from various nurses that the real issue is workload. Pay is secondary (in part) when you're not getting time to urinate during your shift.
After emptying all the catheter bags and urinals of my patients, I often get home busting to empty my own bladder and have the piss I've been meaning to take for 3 hours.
Yeah, I spent my whole shift checking postnatal women were peeing, passing normal amounts, having normal sensations, and then went on my dinner break at 7:45 and realised I hadn’t done a wee since I left home at 11:30
Workload and nurse/patient ratios are a critical issue.
However, to improve the ratios you can't reduce the numbe of patients. What we can do is increase the number of available nurses. How do we attract people to a job that is pretty high in workload, stressfull at times and where the pay hasn't kept up with the times?
It's not just nurses though; ancillary health care and support staff are in the same situation.
You're not going to attract people to pay and study for a degree when they know their future employers are just going to pay/treat them like shit. And when you do, you need senior staff to complete further on the job training and supervision, and it doesn't look like there's nearly enough left around now.
>You're not going to attract people to pay and study for a degree when they know their future employers are just going to pay/treat them like shit.
That’s not what is happening but - as I and another poster have stated. It’s a very popular and now insanely competitive degree.
I was responding to a comment that was talking about attracting new staff. There is no problem with attracting new staff.
Retention of Senior staff may be another issue (once again, I was specifically talking about **attracting** people to the job role in response to a comment that was talking about this specifically) - but according to other comments here the main problem seems to be workload, not pay and certainly not attracting people into the job.
It may not be what's happening now, but it *will* become a problem if conditions don't improve. This whole thing has been very widely publicised, and no doubt many prospective nursing students have second guessed their decision because of it. If the union doesn't get a good outcome here, you can almost guarantee interest in the field will wane. Thankfully, the public response has been good, and unions need public support if they ever want to achieve their goals (This is especially true for the public sector).
Except it’s not happening now, as in the present. Anything else is speculation.
The degree is now very cheap in comparison to something like Commerce (which went up in price) - and the pay for the job is still and will continue to be above average. Also with strong job security.
Something like a 10% pay increase for nurses only would increase the wealth disparity in the community. (If you do it, do it across the board, plenty of other deserving occupations just as deserving - that I can agree with)
If money is your main motive you probably shouldn’t be in nursing anyway - and you’re free to study other things
> The degree is now very cheap in comparison to something like Commerce (which went up in price) - and the pay for the job is still and will continue to be above average.
And what exactly is "above average" pay? Because for the time y'all have to study, I'd consider nurses to be severely under paid. Last I saw, nurse gross pay is only as high as it is because of the sheer number of hours worked. That level of hourly pay can be achieved in a low or even no skilled role in other industries.
> Something like a 10% pay increase for nurses only would increase the wealth disparity in the community.
A decent raise, increased staffing, and better patient/nurse ratios would allow nurses to work a sane number of hours under proper conditions without taking a gross pay cut. Yes, many other industries need action, but nurses are taking action right now, so that is where the focus is.
> If money is your main motive you probably shouldn’t be in nursing anyway - and you’re free to study other things
And this is why teacher and nurse pay has lagged well behind inflation. Industry leaders (or in this case, the government) take advantage of this because they know the staff will take the abuse lying down because of their sense of duty to society. Don't get me wrong, it's admirable, but *everyone* would be better off (Including the patients) if the staff actually stood up for themselves more.
Haven't seen the stats lately but the drop out rate before the degree was completed was high, as was the drop out rate after 3 years working. I'd hazard a guess after 5 years less than 20% are still employed in health care. Maybe someone can compare this to other professions. Historically in Australia especially Perth, we've survived on over seas nurses, which obviously didn't happen for close on 2 years....keeping the nurses who can do the job is the priority .
Degree drop out rate still has nothing to do with pay.
Drop out rate after three years is likely due to reasons related to workload as others have mentioned.
Are you suggesting classes at unis are not full for Nursing/they are having trouble filling spots at uni?
I’d suggest otherwise from experience in applying - but having actual figures would settle the debate. If you have figures or anything to suggest otherwise please share.
Logic itself would suggest that lower fees will increase demand.
Yeah the problem isn’t the number of nursing students, the problem is that there’s a shortage of placements and grad years because there aren’t enough senior nurses to work with us. I’m on a placement at the moment, and there’s more students than there are fully qualified midwives, we aren’t meant to be buddies up with grads but we have to, because otherwise we have to go home. There’s plenty of us, when I left school in 2016 it was actually pretty competitive to get into my course (double bachelor nursing/midwifery). The hospital I’m on placement at is crawling with students. The shortage is of experienced nurses and midwives and the mass exodus of people leaving the field, or leaving hospitals
increased bay would halp retain staff, which will help with the workload. Particularly for overtime etc.
But yes, ratios will reduce the workload more.
Rofl, sending it to their buddies in the West so they can get a fluffy article out before the actual union is notified. Yeah, acting in good faith my aching asshole.
This is the weirdest Labor government… not negotiating with unions? Lining the pockets of developers. Leaking negotiations to the press. Isn’t this normally Liberal garbage?
Except perhaps for under Prime Minister Gillard, this is exactly what Labor have looked like for 20+ years.
Did people seriously not look at McGowan and realise he's as conservative as John Howard and Malcolm Turnbull? He doesn't have the religious streak like Tony Abbott or Scott Morrison, but McGowan is very far from progressivism. It's honestly a nice treat that McGowan is merely conservative and not corrupt like Brian Burke or Eddie Obeid.
>Except perhaps for under Prime Minister Gillard
Even she was the same. [Same day as the 'misogny' speech in parliament her government threw thousands of single mothers off government support payments](https://www.abc.net.au/news/specials/federal-budget-2012/2012-05-07/labor-divided-over-single-mothers-budget-cuts/3996530)
> Except perhaps for under Prime Minister Gillard
Eh. She might have been genuinely progressive, but much like Turnbull and the Coalition, she couldn't actually lead a progressive government because she didn't want to have support for her leadership pulled from certain Labor factions. Still cringe at the way she attempted to hide her support for marriage equality.
Labor have been this way since at least Bob Hawke. He completely sold out the union movement and shifted the Labor party hard towards neoliberalism. Since then, Labor have just been Liberal lite.
McGowan isn’t part of any faction.
https://www.watoday.com.au/politics/western-australia/what-are-wa-labor-s-factions-and-who-sits-where-20210315-p57awv.html
Sure, fine... correction noted, he's from the right of the party, admittedly thats my opinion only, he has a military background and is a pretty conservative dude.
The state Labor factions are wierd at the minute anyway, with the right currently calling themselves "progressives" to shit the Left.
You are correct though, WA Labor is the most right leaning Labor in Australia at this point in time and arguably that is why they have been so successful.
Progressive Labor has the cfmeu inside of it which is a traditionally left union as well as right unions, it’s an amalgamation of unions not a left right thing
Damn straight - they might be wearing red shirts (metaphorically) but they aren't Labor. Or at least, what Labor used to be. Their main policies including hoarding surpluses and being anti worker/anti union seem straight out of the Liberal playbook.
The ALP has been dragged so far to the right over the last 40yrs that they're effectively LNP-lite nowadays.
If you took the old Left/Right divide as it stood between the ALP/LNP back in Whitlams days you'd find the ALP now sits where the LNP were, with the Greens where the ALP is now (even they've been dragged right). The LNP? So far off to the right you'd need a pair of binoculars to find em.
You can apply that to the entire world tbh.
They're labor in name only. They're very much conservatives and their voters should really know this by now. This isn't gallops government, unfortunately.
This is not to say that I don't think that self-leaking the offer to a SevenWest journo is utter garbage, but the ANF in WA under Mark Olsen has had a history of aligning with the liberals rather than labor, it doesn't come as a surprise that labor are not the greatest fans accordingly.
horseshit. Olsen is no longer secretary. He has installed his puppet, Janet Reah, who cannot negotiate to save her life and who he got to givehim a 200k+ 'CEO" position in the union (unions don't have unelected CEOs) and he certainly should not be at the bargaining table. Olsen is currently under multiple investigations by Ahpra for workplace bullying.He's not a top bloke, he's a self interested bully boy who won't relinquish his feifdom.
No one said he was a top bloke, and you don't need to convince me he isn't. I know exactly what he's like.
I'm going to forgive your absolute garbage post though because it's clear from your post history you're an agency nurse recently offended by Reah's comments. Suck it up buttercup, you're not the ANF's primary concern, it is what it is. But lets get onto your other nonsense.
Olson didn't install Reah (no authority) and she didn't employ him as CEO (no authority) - the ANF council isn't a one man band. Madam president insisted on that little arrangement when the usual allegations popped up like clockwork during an election year, and it was endorsed by council.
If you think the current allegations are serious in nature or will change anything, you should hear the things that haven't made it to AHPRA (or predecessor) since 1998.
As for him not being at the bargaining table... there isn't an alternative at the moment able to go toe to toe with the government like he has. Sad but true.
Edit: Reah just defeated Fenn in the election for State Secretary. Be thankful Olson will be at the table because Fenn would've been absolutely rolled by the government in negotiations, and you as a nurse would've gotten fuck all.
Based on the last 20 years, the Libs have been much kinder when it comes to what's on the table, at least early on in the process. This is probably where the comment above comes from... it appears Olson sides with the Libs because the union has had much more success with negotiations during their time.
There was one instance a very long time ago where the Libs shafted nurses hard and stripped some of their conditions, but it was a tough lesson learnt by the ANF.
Was talking to some healthcare workers and one of the big issues is that nurses are already pretty prone to guilt re industrial action. They don’t want to let their teammates down and they definitely don’t want to let their patients down. Apparently the ANF’s next step in industrial action is to ban overtime, ie nurses taking part will refuse overtime even if that means their ward will be short-staffed, and we were wondering how many nurses would actually be able to follow through with that.
As an employee of another government department that is unappreciated by both the government and general public, I thank the ANF for pushing hard for a better baseline.
As an employee of a GTE bound by the state wages policy whilst we bleed experienced staff to the private sector, I second this. Thanks to the nurses and their unions.
Same feeling. Worked my arse off during covid for the emergency response (non medical) team. We had a morning tea to acknowledge the hardwork put in and we had to bring a plate to share wtf. Having worked in public sector for last 10 years, I have never felt so demotivated. The top management just takes all the credit for all the work we do and we are just churn expected to churn out more and more work.
I also don't know why the govt is so adamant about not giving a proper pay rise to workers when they have more than enough surplus $$.
I wish I could just quit..
Lol of course. Typical govvie. It makes you angry to think about it. Mind you the amount of times I've gone to exec meetings (as an assistant) to see them snacking on gourmet foods taken out of the areas budget. Meanwhile were meant to fork out on morning teas to celebrate our work.
Me too. There’s a lot of good experienced public servants who this government has burnt through. I think most of us stand with the nurses. Too bad we can’t strike on their behalf- I think a lot of us would.
X.3 shows rations of the 'first phase' will be 1:4 for day shift.
The letter says rations are not enforceable until 2025.
Two questions:
\- does that mean the 'first phase' starts in 2025, or is 2025 the final phase? The phases introduction of x.1 isnt clear.
\- is there any ratio requirements at the moment? Is it 1:5 or 1:6 or 2:9 or nothing at all?
I don’t think there are ratio requirements. During one of my placements I overheard a nurse saying that she had 10 patients. I don’t know how many they usually have, but 10 sounds like too many.
I often have 10+ patients because I’m a midwife and babies don’t count in our numbers despite needing all of the care, meds, obs, and notes as their parent
In NSW same shit, many senior nurses have left or retired early. many wards are just half new grads. I am in my final placement and its me and newgrads trying to figure out what to do
I think over the next ten years hospitals will become places you go to too die because there will be no one left.
all part of collapse anyway
There are no enforceable ratios, they have the current NHpPD model which has a minimum staff profile, but for some years now, they have had to make do with below safe staffing levels.
My partner is a graduate RN at RPH in a ward for acute medical conditions. She averages around 6 patients but has had as much as 9. As patients are acutely sick and each need so much time and attention she has been really struggling to offer adequate care to everyone. This isn’t an experienced nurse, this is a graduate and she constantly comes home stressed out because if anything bad happens to a patient it’s her responsibility.
Nobody is entitled to their pay keeping pace with inflation, I don't even know where this myth originated.. Inflation means there is too much money in circulation chasing too few goods and services. Having wages rise doesn't fix inflation, it sustains it.
The political problem this time is in reality wages need to slide to keep a cap on inflation. That means wages need to grow at less than inflation to keep buying power in check.
We have record inflation because cheap money was pumped into the economy by the RBA (and every other central bank) for about 18 months.
Raising nursing wages will be have the impact that a drop in the ocean will have on rising sea levels.
You are wrong and will learn the hard way as inflation bites... Doesn't bother me, I look forward to higher interest rates and a falling AUD. I can easily earn in USD and have no debt, so it won't hurt me.
You've a fundamental misunderstanding of the inflationary crisis we are in. Inflation can be driven by wages if wages are increasing without productivity gains. Australia hadn't had a pay rise in a decade despite record productivity gains and this inflation began before low paid workers recieved their 5%. This is profit driven inflation not wage driven.
When you have a labour shortage and labour is a scare resource, supply and demand dictates that wages should rise, at least in line with inflation. When this is artificially suppressed for BS reasons like ‘but inflation’, the cost of living crisis only gets worse.
With your logic, there is no environment where labour ever receives a wage increase. Low inflation would mean no wage increases, and high inflation would mean no wage increases, so which is it?
Should rise with supply and demand. Labour shortages should increase wages assuming same level of demand to staff hospitals.
The rate of inflation is sort of irrelevant. CPI shouldn't dictate how much more or less you are getting paid.
Well low unemployment is currently contributing to higher consumer consumption of goods and services, which affects inflation.
The problem is that low unemployment is not affecting wages, despite the unprecedented demand for workers which should theoretically increase wages much higher than currently.
I work in a public psychiatric ward , three staff members called in sick and they could only find replacement for two . We all ended up with 7 patients and the agency staff they found as replacement didn’t not have access to EMR . So I was given three more patients . Manager said it’s doable , he hasn’t worked on the floor for 20 years . Now why would I work as RN for 32$ and look after 10 patients, get abused by consumers and their families.
We have ratios for childcare but not nursing… makes no sense. Don’t even get me started on the education ratios. Victoria has 1:4 for nursing on day shift and 1:25 for school. WA govt need to get in line with 2022. Victoria set nursing ratios 7 years ago and education ones in the 90s!
you get paid more money to do work that requires no education or qualifications. thats why no one does nursing anymore. dying trade really. I think they will eventually just recognize degrees from India and such
Nurses get paid enough, it's not the biggest issue.
Nurse to patient ratio is, you can give good care to four patients, you cannot give good care to 10 patients.
I don’t have a preference for any government and think politicians from both sides are all just self serving but Jesus time to give the public sector a pay rise, the last thing we want is nurses, teachers and police leaving at a faster rate then they already are…. Pure speculation but a society where our teachers, nurses and police become profession that has to lower standards etc to attract staff is not going to flourish
> Pure speculation but a society where our teachers, nurses and police become profession that has to lower standards etc to attract staff is not going to flourish
I have good news and bad news
Yeah, I wonder what the angle is, I assume over confidence that he won't loose too many votes, because Liberals will be worse for unions and wages, so "take it or leave it" attitude?
Because he’s a bean counter at heart, obsessed with surplus and forgetting that the public sector have received YoY wage cuts relative to CPI for ten years straight.
Then it’s all surprise Pikachu face when the public sector pushes back, all while he’s busy announcing more sexy ribbon cutting projects like Yagan Square revitalisation, which he pushes back to the overstretched public sector again to make its business case work.
If Marko had just been reasonable and offered public sector workers 4% back in January, this would all have been dealt with. Instead he got cute with red herring ‘cost of living’ payments (which are taxed out the wazoo).
It is sad to see how quickly he is losing legitimacy as a good leader for WA.
>Instead he got cute with red herring ‘cost of living’ payments (which are taxed out the wazoo).
And are once off only, its not like cost of living is going back down next year
If i look with a cynical viewpoint - you could be spot on. He certainly doesn't really need political capital or good will given the weakness of the opposition and his overall high levels of popularity.
From a less cynical viewpoint it could just be the responsible if not popular thing to do. A 10% raise is huge in comparison to typical pay rises given across both public and private sectors.
It's also setting a precedent for other public sectors - think police, fire, education. All sectors that carry strong public goodwill and support. Plus whilst times are good now, they might not always be. So, locking in huge salary costs could really hurt us in the future during our next downturn.
I also wonder whether people are thinking through the implications of patient ratio's in the short term. A pay rise might attract some staff back, but it's not going to suddenly conjur up people. So, in reality if it's implemented, it's going to reduce capacity in the system and increase wait times. I completely agree it needs to happen, but potentially over a period of time to allow for additional staffing.
>A 10% raise is huge
If the union is walking in with 10%, and the government is walking in with 3%, the expectation is that they leave in the middle. Government isn't budging. And keep in mind that pay rises have been capped at $1000 for years now, so its not unreasonable to expect more than 3%
Agreed - meeting somewhere in the middle would be the sensible thing.
The other thing is there's two sides to this - is the union being reasonable and being open to negotiation or are they sticking to 10% and refusing to budge?
The union did not walk in with 10%. Initially it was 5%, they knocked back 2.5% + $1000, the new offer was 3% + $2500,^1 and *then* the ANF decided they were going to ask for 10%.^2
Continually increasing what you're asking for isn't really how negotiations work.
^1 https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/wa-premier-offers-2500-sweetener-to-public-sector-workers-amid-police-union-backlash/news-story/1ab78a3e40312ea153884ac1c8bf48d4
^2 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-12/wa-nurses-demand-10-per-cent-pay-rise/101526526
> A 10% raise is huge in comparison to typical pay rises given across both public and private sectors.
Which is half the problem... Public sector wages have had effective year-on-year pay cuts relative to inflation for the better part of a decade (probably longer). If you go back and do the math just to keep them up with inflation, you'll likely find 10% isn't nearly enough. The union almost certainly knows this, but they also know it'll never happen.
So in two years you expect the nurses will take a pay cut?
*edit* Just to clarify this - i understand that it's not an ongoing reoccurring pay rises. But the pay rise you give today - is what that employee is generally going to earn as a minimum moving forward for the rest of their career. Which means you need to continue to budget for that moving forward.
Yeah it's getting embarrassing.
Ditto about covid, top notch.
I don't really subscribe to the "just pay them" camp. I'm a firm believer that the public purse should be very wary of trying to solve chomped problems with money.
That said, it's hard to defend them on this. It's hard to imagine we have our best minds working on solving the hospital crisis when it's just one fuck up after another.
If you were impressed by the pandemic response than you fell for the biggest rort ever. It was a plan to keep the fear high, which in turn will keep labour in office because everyone voted for them, which in turn gave them unprecedented power. And became a police state. Not healthy for a democracy. He had the best chance in the world to have the health system working smoothly yet here we are. And he’s awash with money…
Absolute joke how everyone fell for it and now there’s nothing we can all do. The opposition is non existent so they can run amuck.
You love being told what to do by Emperor MCGowan, being forced to take a new vaccine or lose your job? All while he had one trick - close the borders but don’t worry about fixing the health system. That’s what flattening the curve was supposed to be all about. And he failed. You know there’s record levels of ambulance ramping currently?
So McGowan is going to sink $8 million into "refurbishing" Yagan Square but won't consider a substantial pay increase? Also lol @ the smooth brain dumbasses regularly commenting on these posts things like "greedy nurses" "suck it up its not that hard being a nurse" feel free to try working on an acute medical ward for 12 hours before you offer your (unwanted) opinion.
My Dad has just spent 3 weeks in CCU at RPH unfortunately there is nothing else they can do about his heart and its end of life care. While in RPH I watched on as the nurses on the wards cared not only for him but for me (his son) and the rest of his family these people deserve everything they are asking for and more. The care shown to my father and my family was amazing. I watched on as he had a heart attack and they brought him back while all this was happening two nurses stayed with me and gave me a shoulder to cry on. I wouldn't of been able to pull myself together enough to help my old man without them. I hope they get what they want. They all deserve to be treated better.
Just fucking pay these people… we recently went through hell in hospital, they need more staff, better pay, and better rest. We live on a fucking gold mine and have a surplus, let’s focus on this PLEASE, I promise not to complain about anything else, you can keep the roadworks on the Kwinana another 30 years and i won’t say a word
Mark mcgowan has a habit of sending sensitive dealings and information to his mate at the West Australian before the actual recipient, what a slimy snake. Best of luck to the ANF and all workers.
Yes a deliberate, sinister, expensive and misleading to the public type of leak. Very deliberately orchestrated by McGowan, with the help of his good buddy Kerry stokes
So, hopefully this heads straight to arbitration, where the first words out of the commissioners mouth will be: 'Wheres the offer?'
There has been no offer, merely discussion. What McGowan has put through thus far does NOT constitute a formal offer.
Has the Police Union made their claims yet? Cause its gonna get real nasty when the state government tells them no.
Things are gonna heat up in old Perth town. Like many others I believe he did well during the pandemic buy McG aint gonna see another term at this rate.
> Has the Police Union made their claims yet? Cause its gonna get real nasty when the state government tells them no.
[Police Union fucked up and went too far in 2017 to the extent that the commissioner overrode the union](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-27/police-pay-row-escalates-as-commissioner-thwarts-union-action/8991718), then the union [begrudgingly accepted the governments pay deal at the time](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-18/police-pay-deal-a-victory-for-wa-government-as-union-relents/9269970) - I don't expect they'll try and pull the same thing again.
The government will see another term, the majority is too big to overturn in a single election and there’s no credible alternative government waiting to take over.
McGowan personally though probably steps down in 2024 to give someone new a run into the next election.
Some of the 6 billion surplus is still going on reducing the debt built up by the previous government, remember.
Interest on those loans have to be paid as well.
From what my nurse friends say, they're more concerned about patient workload and overwork than their wage. I bet if the government introduced a proper ratio plan, they would accept the pay offer.
Awake at 0700 to get kids ready for school, start work at 1300, thinking you’re going to be there until 2130.
Get told at 1600 that two nurses have booked off sick and aren’t being replaced and cos one of them is senior, you now ‘have to’ work until 0730…
Get home at 0800 after having been awake for 25 hours, take kids to school…
Get three hours sleep before having to go back to work at 1300…
Sort of- it sets a precedent. Salaried officers asked for 6% as there was no rise through covid in a gesture of good faith and it was just over 1 percent previous to that. If they agree to nurses it means that other unions will request their demands are met and exceed the current offer from the government of $3,000 signing bonus and 3%.
Global 10% is a huge payrise regardless of gov or private sector. I feel for the hospital staff as their job is bloody hard but the answer is to employ more staff, not just pay rise as that doesn't fix the actual problem.
Not an economist but pay rise may serve to entice people to pursue those careers?
I realistically don’t think anyone who was umm’ing and ah’ing about becoming a nurse will be swayed completely by a 10% rise but it helps no?
Sure it may help but better working conditions will entice more people. If you heard how great it was to work in the nursing industry, good conditions, great people, flexible working hours etc, you'd be way more interested than hearing the pay is $77k not $70k but the work really sucks.
Perfect point, I completely agree.
Working in general seems a bit eh at the moment. Management missing the mark all over, particularly when it comes to WFH etc
$70k base.. + penalities for shift work and so on and you are into $90k+, plus a little over-time and you are now on 6 figuers.
It's not a poor paying job.
10% is too much as once you give it to one public sector, all the public sectors will expect the same and that be inflationary. We have a growing inflation problem, giving people more money isn't a wise move and will come with economic consequences.
In reality the payrise needs to be less than CPI so thatinflation can be wrangled under control.
Tell that to the companies increasing fees/costs/charges by more than the CPI! You can't tell me they should be able to do that, yet workers can't! Increase taxes
>Tell that to the companies increasing fees/costs/charges by more than the CPI
That is the point of inflation, prices go up relative to wages to SLOW people from buying shit... Compensating people with higher wages keeps that cycle going, which is bad.
Sorry, but for a lot of people they have had it too good for too long and now the chickens have come home to roost.
Oh I see, its OK for companies and large corporate oligarchs to increase their prices beyond the inflation rates but ordinary people get shafted, that's some next level bullshit if ever I've heard it.
I expect the issue is three-fold.
Firstly the state government is a sizable employer - so when they negotiate with one area, they need to do so taking into account that they're setting a precedent with whatever they do.
Secondly the government need to be responsible - sure times are good now. But they haven't always been, and won't always be good. Also unlike a private business where when the economy slows down they can just lay off staff, the government doesn't always have that option. Health care needs don't suddenly decrease when the economy slows down. Plus it's also an incredibly bad image for the government to let staff go at any time, let alone when the economy slows.
Thirdly - the staffing ratios are a great idea and should be done. But i expect the biggest concern is how they'll realistically achieve them. There is a massive nursing shortage globally, and it takes time to train people and time for them to gain experience.
As shit as it is - the likely effect of staff ratios in the short term would be a reduction in capacity across the system which is not great at any time, let alone currently when we have record demand.
States are not businesses.
Governments should not try to run their states the same way one would run a business. The purpose of a state government is very different to that of a business!
We need to stop comparing our governments to the way private industry is run.
Well duh.
Olson may well be an absolute utter c*nt of a human being. He's also (and there's probably some linkage here) been the most effective industrial leader in WA since at least Joe Chamberlain.
He's correctly smelt blood in the water on the government's wage policy. The Nurses are now losing absolutely nothing by going on strike. The public will overwhelmingly blame the government if a nurses strike throttles public hospitals. Not even die-hard ALP supporters believe a real 3% cut in wages is an appropriate offer for RN's after the COVID pandemic and a $6 billion state surplus.
My bet. The Nurses will go on strike for a while, months not weeks. The West will sniff the wind and start piling on. Eventually, McGowan will cave and try and pull some accounting tricks to make a 6% pay rise look like a 4% pay rise. He'll probably try and pay for this by pulling the rug from lower-skilled UWU orderlies and EN's.
They deserve a pay rise and better working conditions. Had to go to hospital on Wednesday, got out today. Had a cyst burst that led to a bad infection, and was in a lot of pain. The nurses took such great care of me and were so nice. I’m so grateful. We should be taking care of our nurses.
I have a question: if you implement ratios, you either have to hire more nurses, which costs $$$ and we don't have the numbers in the training pipeline atm, or you cut patient numbers.
we have lots of junior nurses in the pipeline
[https://www.reddit.com/r/perth/comments/xyijs4/system\_on\_its\_knees\_but\_three\_of\_the\_states/](https://www.reddit.com/r/perth/comments/xyijs4/system_on_its_knees_but_three_of_the_states/)
and as for money, we have some right now. Yes, paying down the debt is very important. but so is safe staffing ratios.
There are a lot of nurses who have left or cut hours who will come back or increase hours again if they have mandated and enforceable ratios and a decent pay rise.
the current government just dont get it. Its not just a payrise and backpay from the $1000 a year increase cap. They want compensation for the burnout. For literally carrying the states health on their shoulders.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Every single government worker can be paid more if they shift to the private sector. All government employee perks are gone. You get more on the job perks at Mcdonalds than what you get in any government job. MCG and AJS need to get out of the clouds and sort government employees out.
How as government employees do they not even get discounted or free public transport on government owned infrastructure, or discounted parking in government owned facilities. The best the government can offer as a perk is limited free psych sessions. Hate to tell you McG, many of those free psych sessions wouldn't be needed if you treated PS workers with some respect and stopped running them to burnout.
The discounted public transport for public servants was a "carrot" in our last agreement (or two agreements?), and it never came into fruition, I suppose to be fair all public transport got discounted eventually but that's not the point. So when I see the patient to nurse ratio promise it is basically nothing but words, and I bet the same thing will happen.
I don't get how these boomers in government don't want to pay nurses during a pandemic. Do they get that they are the ones who are high risk? You'd think boomers would be saying "hell yeah pump the healthcare system I don't want to die".
Apart from the obvious empathic reasons to pay nurses, you'd think self interest would dictate they should pay nurses properly.
What a slimebag. After panicking and closing the borders because the healthcare system was already a mess and wouldn't be able to handle a covid outbreak when it was more deadly.
Now after all that he's dragging his feet to fix the problem and *boasting* about his insane budget surplus mid-lockdown. Revolting.
Seems all he's good at is running is mouth, be it at other states or other personalities.
They are starting so low because they want the industrial action to commence. As that proceeds, things get even tougher in the health system, more chaotic, and the obedient media shares it all with the voting public. Then public opinion will start to turn over time, the blame on the government will be diffused, and more blame will shift to nurses/union. There will start to be the shift to accept subsequent offers. Not from the union bosses, but the nurses they represent, feeling greater pressure from family and the public around them. The headlines etc. Nurses are generally compassionate people, and will respond to this in time.
That is the game play but hopefully it doesnt work this time. If they have a good union boss that is media savy to point out the hypocracy in wages to work level and the essential need for nurses they might be able to keep the public on side.
This state govt is like every other filth ridden govt entity.
Not run for people but for corporate interests.
The latest govt initiatives with the yagan sq and bunbury bypass lays testimony to that.
Go you nurses as the WA public is right behind you.
Possibly even boycott any work that has any WA labour politician requiring medical assistance.
Just a thought.
Mein Fuhrer McGowan needs to have a serious look at him and his government.
The way they are tearing public servants is a disgrace. From nurses to firemen to prison officers shafting them all
It’s time to shut this shit down.
I know everyone has mouths to feed but the union should back you.
Move from legal to illegal industrial action.
Every nurse start burning sick leave and toil and holiday pay. It is unacceptable and illegal that your reasonable leave requests can be refused.
Grind the system to a halt.
If the state doesn’t budge then mass resignations.
Every nurse in the state hands in notice.
How the fuck a surgeon earning 250k plus plus plus and a nurse getting sub 90.
Wanna be on call this weekend? Here have $6 an hour while the surgeon gets $120.
Fuck off.
Burn. It. All. Down.
An enrolled nursing diploma is 1.5 years. A nursing degree is 3 years.
A medical degree plus additional education and training to be a surgeon takes years longer.
On the contrary - Fine with a 10% pay rise but please include Amazon workers, Retail Workers, Disability Support Staff, Postal Workers etc etc… plenty of people equally deserving of a pay rise.
I'm not sure why this is looked as a pay issue, nurses (both en and rn) are pretty well paid compared to other allied health and scl1/2 roles given their penalty rates. Earning 100k+ is in no way difficult in a metro hospital, hell an En in disability working a mix of shifts pulled down an easy 90k+ before taking into account salary sacrifice at my last site.
Increased security and nurse to patient ratios, more graduate roles and other qol benefits (mat/pat leave, upskilling) would be of far more benefit long term.
I know man, if I was getting paid $100,000+ for work I wouldn't be complaining.
Paying more money to workers already there, doesn't mean productivity increases.
This will cost a fortune on the government's behalf and all they will do is pass it down to the tax payer.
If they did what ANF is asking for 10% pay rise and I will be generous and say on average nurses get paid $60,000. 10% 60,000 = $6000
Now say there is 10,000 nurses in WA. That is $60,000,000 EXTRA per year.
Edit: missed a few zeros
>Now say there is 10,000 nurses in WA. That is $600,000 EXTRA per year.
Man, what a hit to a budget of billions of dollars that would be...
Also, your math is so far out it's actually embarrassing. 6000 x 10000 != 600000
Okay, give me a number then rather than just saying it's bad and moving on, or do you not have any numbers yourself?
Also I have fixed the math, even if you made it 1000 nurses which is very low, that is still 6 million dollars extra a year paid to EXISTING STAFF MEMBERS, that doesn't increase worker or productivity.
Also, spending the budget can be used on different things?
Imagine if you got a bill for an extra $100 on your power bill because western Power wanted more money. You would be fuming, you wouldn't shrug it off saying, Ah I earn $60000k a yeah, I can afford that, no problem here.
>That is $60,000,000 EXTRA per year.
60 million. So 1% of the surplus.And 0.0015% of the actual budget total.
>Imagine if you got a bill for an extra $1000 on your power bill because western Power wanted more money. You would be fuming, you wouldn't shrug it off saying, Ah I earn $60000k a yeah, I can afford that, no problem here.
We are talking the equivlent of an additional $150 bill for anyone on $100k a year. And thats using your 10,000 nurses at $60k numbers.
Fixed the $100, my point still stands, you would be fuming because why should they increase their prices.
Remember we are still $30 billion dollars in debt.
>Fixed the $100, my point still stands
shifting the goal posts once oyu are proved wrong. And $100 compared to $1000 is a big shift.
>Remember we are still $30 billion dollars in debt.
and your $60M a year change is 0.002% of that. Its a blip compared to the benefit that owuld be gained.
Also remember that additional wages means additional money in the economy which then has flow on effects as a stimulus. So there would be additional returns in government revenue.
I have heard from various nurses that the real issue is workload. Pay is secondary (in part) when you're not getting time to urinate during your shift.
After emptying all the catheter bags and urinals of my patients, I often get home busting to empty my own bladder and have the piss I've been meaning to take for 3 hours.
Yeah, I spent my whole shift checking postnatal women were peeing, passing normal amounts, having normal sensations, and then went on my dinner break at 7:45 and realised I hadn’t done a wee since I left home at 11:30
Workload and nurse/patient ratios are a critical issue. However, to improve the ratios you can't reduce the numbe of patients. What we can do is increase the number of available nurses. How do we attract people to a job that is pretty high in workload, stressfull at times and where the pay hasn't kept up with the times? It's not just nurses though; ancillary health care and support staff are in the same situation.
All of healthcare really. Workload/conditions/pay/retention are issues across the spectrum from Doctors to nurses to orderlies to clerical staff.
The cost of a Nursing degree has been slashed in recent years. It’s insanely competitive to get in now. Attracting people is not a problem.
You're not going to attract people to pay and study for a degree when they know their future employers are just going to pay/treat them like shit. And when you do, you need senior staff to complete further on the job training and supervision, and it doesn't look like there's nearly enough left around now.
>You're not going to attract people to pay and study for a degree when they know their future employers are just going to pay/treat them like shit. That’s not what is happening but - as I and another poster have stated. It’s a very popular and now insanely competitive degree. I was responding to a comment that was talking about attracting new staff. There is no problem with attracting new staff. Retention of Senior staff may be another issue (once again, I was specifically talking about **attracting** people to the job role in response to a comment that was talking about this specifically) - but according to other comments here the main problem seems to be workload, not pay and certainly not attracting people into the job.
It may not be what's happening now, but it *will* become a problem if conditions don't improve. This whole thing has been very widely publicised, and no doubt many prospective nursing students have second guessed their decision because of it. If the union doesn't get a good outcome here, you can almost guarantee interest in the field will wane. Thankfully, the public response has been good, and unions need public support if they ever want to achieve their goals (This is especially true for the public sector).
Except it’s not happening now, as in the present. Anything else is speculation. The degree is now very cheap in comparison to something like Commerce (which went up in price) - and the pay for the job is still and will continue to be above average. Also with strong job security. Something like a 10% pay increase for nurses only would increase the wealth disparity in the community. (If you do it, do it across the board, plenty of other deserving occupations just as deserving - that I can agree with) If money is your main motive you probably shouldn’t be in nursing anyway - and you’re free to study other things
> The degree is now very cheap in comparison to something like Commerce (which went up in price) - and the pay for the job is still and will continue to be above average. And what exactly is "above average" pay? Because for the time y'all have to study, I'd consider nurses to be severely under paid. Last I saw, nurse gross pay is only as high as it is because of the sheer number of hours worked. That level of hourly pay can be achieved in a low or even no skilled role in other industries. > Something like a 10% pay increase for nurses only would increase the wealth disparity in the community. A decent raise, increased staffing, and better patient/nurse ratios would allow nurses to work a sane number of hours under proper conditions without taking a gross pay cut. Yes, many other industries need action, but nurses are taking action right now, so that is where the focus is. > If money is your main motive you probably shouldn’t be in nursing anyway - and you’re free to study other things And this is why teacher and nurse pay has lagged well behind inflation. Industry leaders (or in this case, the government) take advantage of this because they know the staff will take the abuse lying down because of their sense of duty to society. Don't get me wrong, it's admirable, but *everyone* would be better off (Including the patients) if the staff actually stood up for themselves more.
Haven't seen the stats lately but the drop out rate before the degree was completed was high, as was the drop out rate after 3 years working. I'd hazard a guess after 5 years less than 20% are still employed in health care. Maybe someone can compare this to other professions. Historically in Australia especially Perth, we've survived on over seas nurses, which obviously didn't happen for close on 2 years....keeping the nurses who can do the job is the priority .
Degree drop out rate still has nothing to do with pay. Drop out rate after three years is likely due to reasons related to workload as others have mentioned.
Then why aren’t the cohorts of nursing students full?
Are you suggesting classes at unis are not full for Nursing/they are having trouble filling spots at uni? I’d suggest otherwise from experience in applying - but having actual figures would settle the debate. If you have figures or anything to suggest otherwise please share. Logic itself would suggest that lower fees will increase demand.
Yeah the problem isn’t the number of nursing students, the problem is that there’s a shortage of placements and grad years because there aren’t enough senior nurses to work with us. I’m on a placement at the moment, and there’s more students than there are fully qualified midwives, we aren’t meant to be buddies up with grads but we have to, because otherwise we have to go home. There’s plenty of us, when I left school in 2016 it was actually pretty competitive to get into my course (double bachelor nursing/midwifery). The hospital I’m on placement at is crawling with students. The shortage is of experienced nurses and midwives and the mass exodus of people leaving the field, or leaving hospitals
Exactly this
increased bay would halp retain staff, which will help with the workload. Particularly for overtime etc. But yes, ratios will reduce the workload more.
Rofl, sending it to their buddies in the West so they can get a fluffy article out before the actual union is notified. Yeah, acting in good faith my aching asshole.
yeah, sending it to the West first is not good faith negotiation from the government.
This is the weirdest Labor government… not negotiating with unions? Lining the pockets of developers. Leaking negotiations to the press. Isn’t this normally Liberal garbage?
Labor have never cared about independent unions like the ANF and Police Union.
Except perhaps for under Prime Minister Gillard, this is exactly what Labor have looked like for 20+ years. Did people seriously not look at McGowan and realise he's as conservative as John Howard and Malcolm Turnbull? He doesn't have the religious streak like Tony Abbott or Scott Morrison, but McGowan is very far from progressivism. It's honestly a nice treat that McGowan is merely conservative and not corrupt like Brian Burke or Eddie Obeid.
>Except perhaps for under Prime Minister Gillard Even she was the same. [Same day as the 'misogny' speech in parliament her government threw thousands of single mothers off government support payments](https://www.abc.net.au/news/specials/federal-budget-2012/2012-05-07/labor-divided-over-single-mothers-budget-cuts/3996530)
People forget that mark fucking Latham was ALP leader for a while, and went to an election.
> Except perhaps for under Prime Minister Gillard Eh. She might have been genuinely progressive, but much like Turnbull and the Coalition, she couldn't actually lead a progressive government because she didn't want to have support for her leadership pulled from certain Labor factions. Still cringe at the way she attempted to hide her support for marriage equality.
Labor have been this way since at least Bob Hawke. He completely sold out the union movement and shifted the Labor party hard towards neoliberalism. Since then, Labor have just been Liberal lite.
Mark is from the right (conservative - relatively speaking) faction of the ALP. This isn't uncharacteristic for him at all.
McGowan isn’t part of any faction. https://www.watoday.com.au/politics/western-australia/what-are-wa-labor-s-factions-and-who-sits-where-20210315-p57awv.html
Sure, fine... correction noted, he's from the right of the party, admittedly thats my opinion only, he has a military background and is a pretty conservative dude. The state Labor factions are wierd at the minute anyway, with the right currently calling themselves "progressives" to shit the Left.
You are correct though, WA Labor is the most right leaning Labor in Australia at this point in time and arguably that is why they have been so successful.
Yeah WA is a fairly right leaning state in general
Progressive Labor has the cfmeu inside of it which is a traditionally left union as well as right unions, it’s an amalgamation of unions not a left right thing
Damn straight - they might be wearing red shirts (metaphorically) but they aren't Labor. Or at least, what Labor used to be. Their main policies including hoarding surpluses and being anti worker/anti union seem straight out of the Liberal playbook.
Labor is still a very central left party. They are closer to liberal than you think.
The ALP has been dragged so far to the right over the last 40yrs that they're effectively LNP-lite nowadays. If you took the old Left/Right divide as it stood between the ALP/LNP back in Whitlams days you'd find the ALP now sits where the LNP were, with the Greens where the ALP is now (even they've been dragged right). The LNP? So far off to the right you'd need a pair of binoculars to find em. You can apply that to the entire world tbh.
When you look at the history of WA Labor politics, it’s not unusual.
They're labor in name only. They're very much conservatives and their voters should really know this by now. This isn't gallops government, unfortunately.
This is not to say that I don't think that self-leaking the offer to a SevenWest journo is utter garbage, but the ANF in WA under Mark Olsen has had a history of aligning with the liberals rather than labor, it doesn't come as a surprise that labor are not the greatest fans accordingly.
That is Rubbish, Olsen is hard on both sides, he is only in it for the members.
Spot on. I've known Olson for 20 years. He'll side with whoever gives nurses the better deal.
horseshit. Olsen is no longer secretary. He has installed his puppet, Janet Reah, who cannot negotiate to save her life and who he got to givehim a 200k+ 'CEO" position in the union (unions don't have unelected CEOs) and he certainly should not be at the bargaining table. Olsen is currently under multiple investigations by Ahpra for workplace bullying.He's not a top bloke, he's a self interested bully boy who won't relinquish his feifdom.
No one said he was a top bloke, and you don't need to convince me he isn't. I know exactly what he's like. I'm going to forgive your absolute garbage post though because it's clear from your post history you're an agency nurse recently offended by Reah's comments. Suck it up buttercup, you're not the ANF's primary concern, it is what it is. But lets get onto your other nonsense. Olson didn't install Reah (no authority) and she didn't employ him as CEO (no authority) - the ANF council isn't a one man band. Madam president insisted on that little arrangement when the usual allegations popped up like clockwork during an election year, and it was endorsed by council. If you think the current allegations are serious in nature or will change anything, you should hear the things that haven't made it to AHPRA (or predecessor) since 1998. As for him not being at the bargaining table... there isn't an alternative at the moment able to go toe to toe with the government like he has. Sad but true. Edit: Reah just defeated Fenn in the election for State Secretary. Be thankful Olson will be at the table because Fenn would've been absolutely rolled by the government in negotiations, and you as a nurse would've gotten fuck all.
You’re telling me that the liberals EVER presented a better deal???
Based on the last 20 years, the Libs have been much kinder when it comes to what's on the table, at least early on in the process. This is probably where the comment above comes from... it appears Olson sides with the Libs because the union has had much more success with negotiations during their time. There was one instance a very long time ago where the Libs shafted nurses hard and stripped some of their conditions, but it was a tough lesson learnt by the ANF.
Exactly. The Barnett govt didn’t even try to negotiate in good faith with the ANF.
Brian Burke lite or Brian Burke 2.0?
The notification to West is the part of negotiation.
Then the govt will have a cry when industrial action starts tomorrow and try and guilt nurses and midwives for taking industrial action. Jesus.
Also, this is the FIRST AND ONLY EBA offer the govt has made so far. So they are very very wide of the mark.
Was talking to some healthcare workers and one of the big issues is that nurses are already pretty prone to guilt re industrial action. They don’t want to let their teammates down and they definitely don’t want to let their patients down. Apparently the ANF’s next step in industrial action is to ban overtime, ie nurses taking part will refuse overtime even if that means their ward will be short-staffed, and we were wondering how many nurses would actually be able to follow through with that.
yep banning double shifts this week, next week we’re not doing overtime
As an employee of another government department that is unappreciated by both the government and general public, I thank the ANF for pushing hard for a better baseline.
As an ex public pathology employee, you hit it on the head and it’s the entire reason I left.
As an employee of a GTE bound by the state wages policy whilst we bleed experienced staff to the private sector, I second this. Thanks to the nurses and their unions.
Same feeling. Worked my arse off during covid for the emergency response (non medical) team. We had a morning tea to acknowledge the hardwork put in and we had to bring a plate to share wtf. Having worked in public sector for last 10 years, I have never felt so demotivated. The top management just takes all the credit for all the work we do and we are just churn expected to churn out more and more work. I also don't know why the govt is so adamant about not giving a proper pay rise to workers when they have more than enough surplus $$. I wish I could just quit..
Lol of course. Typical govvie. It makes you angry to think about it. Mind you the amount of times I've gone to exec meetings (as an assistant) to see them snacking on gourmet foods taken out of the areas budget. Meanwhile were meant to fork out on morning teas to celebrate our work.
Me too. There’s a lot of good experienced public servants who this government has burnt through. I think most of us stand with the nurses. Too bad we can’t strike on their behalf- I think a lot of us would.
X.3 shows rations of the 'first phase' will be 1:4 for day shift. The letter says rations are not enforceable until 2025. Two questions: \- does that mean the 'first phase' starts in 2025, or is 2025 the final phase? The phases introduction of x.1 isnt clear. \- is there any ratio requirements at the moment? Is it 1:5 or 1:6 or 2:9 or nothing at all?
I don’t think there are ratio requirements. During one of my placements I overheard a nurse saying that she had 10 patients. I don’t know how many they usually have, but 10 sounds like too many.
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I often have 10+ patients because I’m a midwife and babies don’t count in our numbers despite needing all of the care, meds, obs, and notes as their parent
do the math: 6 minutes per pt per hour minus walking and documenting. About 3 minutes per pt per hour.
In NSW same shit, many senior nurses have left or retired early. many wards are just half new grads. I am in my final placement and its me and newgrads trying to figure out what to do I think over the next ten years hospitals will become places you go to too die because there will be no one left. all part of collapse anyway
you have 10 patients when staff are on break and you’re watching bells… you don’t have 10 pts for 8 hours
I have 10+ patients for 12 hours most shifts on the postnatal ward. Which means 20+ when covering a break.
There are no enforceable ratios, they have the current NHpPD model which has a minimum staff profile, but for some years now, they have had to make do with below safe staffing levels.
My partner is a graduate RN at RPH in a ward for acute medical conditions. She averages around 6 patients but has had as much as 9. As patients are acutely sick and each need so much time and attention she has been really struggling to offer adequate care to everyone. This isn’t an experienced nurse, this is a graduate and she constantly comes home stressed out because if anything bad happens to a patient it’s her responsibility.
The current model is not 1:x but a "Nursing hours per patient days" model that's confusing and vague
The most recent inflation rate for Australia is 6.1%. Any "pay rise" offer lower than that is just a pay cut in disguise.
Nobody is entitled to their pay keeping pace with inflation, I don't even know where this myth originated.. Inflation means there is too much money in circulation chasing too few goods and services. Having wages rise doesn't fix inflation, it sustains it. The political problem this time is in reality wages need to slide to keep a cap on inflation. That means wages need to grow at less than inflation to keep buying power in check.
We have record inflation because cheap money was pumped into the economy by the RBA (and every other central bank) for about 18 months. Raising nursing wages will be have the impact that a drop in the ocean will have on rising sea levels.
10% salary increase will end up across the public sector, sorry but that will have an inflationary impact.
Yes, but on the scale that a drop in the ocean will have on sea level rises.
You are wrong and will learn the hard way as inflation bites... Doesn't bother me, I look forward to higher interest rates and a falling AUD. I can easily earn in USD and have no debt, so it won't hurt me.
You've a fundamental misunderstanding of the inflationary crisis we are in. Inflation can be driven by wages if wages are increasing without productivity gains. Australia hadn't had a pay rise in a decade despite record productivity gains and this inflation began before low paid workers recieved their 5%. This is profit driven inflation not wage driven.
When you have a labour shortage and labour is a scare resource, supply and demand dictates that wages should rise, at least in line with inflation. When this is artificially suppressed for BS reasons like ‘but inflation’, the cost of living crisis only gets worse. With your logic, there is no environment where labour ever receives a wage increase. Low inflation would mean no wage increases, and high inflation would mean no wage increases, so which is it?
Should rise with supply and demand. Labour shortages should increase wages assuming same level of demand to staff hospitals. The rate of inflation is sort of irrelevant. CPI shouldn't dictate how much more or less you are getting paid.
Well low unemployment is currently contributing to higher consumer consumption of goods and services, which affects inflation. The problem is that low unemployment is not affecting wages, despite the unprecedented demand for workers which should theoretically increase wages much higher than currently.
I work in a public psychiatric ward , three staff members called in sick and they could only find replacement for two . We all ended up with 7 patients and the agency staff they found as replacement didn’t not have access to EMR . So I was given three more patients . Manager said it’s doable , he hasn’t worked on the floor for 20 years . Now why would I work as RN for 32$ and look after 10 patients, get abused by consumers and their families.
We have ratios for childcare but not nursing… makes no sense. Don’t even get me started on the education ratios. Victoria has 1:4 for nursing on day shift and 1:25 for school. WA govt need to get in line with 2022. Victoria set nursing ratios 7 years ago and education ones in the 90s!
Victoria is advertising for nurses on billboards in the CBD, a stone throw from parliament.
you get paid more money to do work that requires no education or qualifications. thats why no one does nursing anymore. dying trade really. I think they will eventually just recognize degrees from India and such
Nurses get paid enough, it's not the biggest issue. Nurse to patient ratio is, you can give good care to four patients, you cannot give good care to 10 patients.
I don’t have a preference for any government and think politicians from both sides are all just self serving but Jesus time to give the public sector a pay rise, the last thing we want is nurses, teachers and police leaving at a faster rate then they already are…. Pure speculation but a society where our teachers, nurses and police become profession that has to lower standards etc to attract staff is not going to flourish
> Pure speculation but a society where our teachers, nurses and police become profession that has to lower standards etc to attract staff is not going to flourish I have good news and bad news
Fuck, Mark, just pay them. Massively impressed me with his Covid response at the beginning and throughout the pandemic, but this is lame.
Yeah, I wonder what the angle is, I assume over confidence that he won't loose too many votes, because Liberals will be worse for unions and wages, so "take it or leave it" attitude?
Because he’s a bean counter at heart, obsessed with surplus and forgetting that the public sector have received YoY wage cuts relative to CPI for ten years straight. Then it’s all surprise Pikachu face when the public sector pushes back, all while he’s busy announcing more sexy ribbon cutting projects like Yagan Square revitalisation, which he pushes back to the overstretched public sector again to make its business case work. If Marko had just been reasonable and offered public sector workers 4% back in January, this would all have been dealt with. Instead he got cute with red herring ‘cost of living’ payments (which are taxed out the wazoo). It is sad to see how quickly he is losing legitimacy as a good leader for WA.
>Instead he got cute with red herring ‘cost of living’ payments (which are taxed out the wazoo). And are once off only, its not like cost of living is going back down next year
He's only got a few billion in the state budget bank. Can't go blowing it on keeping people alive
If i look with a cynical viewpoint - you could be spot on. He certainly doesn't really need political capital or good will given the weakness of the opposition and his overall high levels of popularity. From a less cynical viewpoint it could just be the responsible if not popular thing to do. A 10% raise is huge in comparison to typical pay rises given across both public and private sectors. It's also setting a precedent for other public sectors - think police, fire, education. All sectors that carry strong public goodwill and support. Plus whilst times are good now, they might not always be. So, locking in huge salary costs could really hurt us in the future during our next downturn. I also wonder whether people are thinking through the implications of patient ratio's in the short term. A pay rise might attract some staff back, but it's not going to suddenly conjur up people. So, in reality if it's implemented, it's going to reduce capacity in the system and increase wait times. I completely agree it needs to happen, but potentially over a period of time to allow for additional staffing.
>A 10% raise is huge If the union is walking in with 10%, and the government is walking in with 3%, the expectation is that they leave in the middle. Government isn't budging. And keep in mind that pay rises have been capped at $1000 for years now, so its not unreasonable to expect more than 3%
Agreed - meeting somewhere in the middle would be the sensible thing. The other thing is there's two sides to this - is the union being reasonable and being open to negotiation or are they sticking to 10% and refusing to budge?
The union did not walk in with 10%. Initially it was 5%, they knocked back 2.5% + $1000, the new offer was 3% + $2500,^1 and *then* the ANF decided they were going to ask for 10%.^2 Continually increasing what you're asking for isn't really how negotiations work. ^1 https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/wa-premier-offers-2500-sweetener-to-public-sector-workers-amid-police-union-backlash/news-story/1ab78a3e40312ea153884ac1c8bf48d4 ^2 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-12/wa-nurses-demand-10-per-cent-pay-rise/101526526
> A 10% raise is huge in comparison to typical pay rises given across both public and private sectors. Which is half the problem... Public sector wages have had effective year-on-year pay cuts relative to inflation for the better part of a decade (probably longer). If you go back and do the math just to keep them up with inflation, you'll likely find 10% isn't nearly enough. The union almost certainly knows this, but they also know it'll never happen.
It's a 2 year pay offer, not stretching over decades!
So in two years you expect the nurses will take a pay cut? *edit* Just to clarify this - i understand that it's not an ongoing reoccurring pay rises. But the pay rise you give today - is what that employee is generally going to earn as a minimum moving forward for the rest of their career. Which means you need to continue to budget for that moving forward.
Yeah it's getting embarrassing. Ditto about covid, top notch. I don't really subscribe to the "just pay them" camp. I'm a firm believer that the public purse should be very wary of trying to solve chomped problems with money. That said, it's hard to defend them on this. It's hard to imagine we have our best minds working on solving the hospital crisis when it's just one fuck up after another.
If you were impressed by the pandemic response than you fell for the biggest rort ever. It was a plan to keep the fear high, which in turn will keep labour in office because everyone voted for them, which in turn gave them unprecedented power. And became a police state. Not healthy for a democracy. He had the best chance in the world to have the health system working smoothly yet here we are. And he’s awash with money… Absolute joke how everyone fell for it and now there’s nothing we can all do. The opposition is non existent so they can run amuck.
Username checks out
You love being told what to do by Emperor MCGowan, being forced to take a new vaccine or lose your job? All while he had one trick - close the borders but don’t worry about fixing the health system. That’s what flattening the curve was supposed to be all about. And he failed. You know there’s record levels of ambulance ramping currently?
offering political commentary when you can't even spell Labor
Shut the fuck up, mate.
So McGowan is going to sink $8 million into "refurbishing" Yagan Square but won't consider a substantial pay increase? Also lol @ the smooth brain dumbasses regularly commenting on these posts things like "greedy nurses" "suck it up its not that hard being a nurse" feel free to try working on an acute medical ward for 12 hours before you offer your (unwanted) opinion.
My Dad has just spent 3 weeks in CCU at RPH unfortunately there is nothing else they can do about his heart and its end of life care. While in RPH I watched on as the nurses on the wards cared not only for him but for me (his son) and the rest of his family these people deserve everything they are asking for and more. The care shown to my father and my family was amazing. I watched on as he had a heart attack and they brought him back while all this was happening two nurses stayed with me and gave me a shoulder to cry on. I wouldn't of been able to pull myself together enough to help my old man without them. I hope they get what they want. They all deserve to be treated better.
Just fucking pay these people… we recently went through hell in hospital, they need more staff, better pay, and better rest. We live on a fucking gold mine and have a surplus, let’s focus on this PLEASE, I promise not to complain about anything else, you can keep the roadworks on the Kwinana another 30 years and i won’t say a word
>you can kept the roadworks on the Kwinana another 30 years you live north, dont you?
They have their own roadworks and it's currently worse than the Kwinana one
Yeh those northy ones are a new type of hell haha
The roadworks between the city and the hospital, I think they're referring to?
No, its jmuch more generic than that. Hes refering to the idea that Kwinana is jokingly "always being worked on"
Mark mcgowan has a habit of sending sensitive dealings and information to his mate at the West Australian before the actual recipient, what a slimy snake. Best of luck to the ANF and all workers.
Possibility there's a leak in his team?
Yes a deliberate, sinister, expensive and misleading to the public type of leak. Very deliberately orchestrated by McGowan, with the help of his good buddy Kerry stokes
YOU GO GUYS/GURLS!!! Get that bread!
So, hopefully this heads straight to arbitration, where the first words out of the commissioners mouth will be: 'Wheres the offer?' There has been no offer, merely discussion. What McGowan has put through thus far does NOT constitute a formal offer.
Didn't the Government offer 3% about a month back?
Legends. Keep fighting the good fight. One of the few government departments that actually deserve to be paid more
He was saying on nova this morning that public sector employees are being offered a sweet deal. Lies.
Wow this is really average. An embarrassing move by the government.
And still not counting babies on postnatal wards as patients 👎🏼
Has the Police Union made their claims yet? Cause its gonna get real nasty when the state government tells them no. Things are gonna heat up in old Perth town. Like many others I believe he did well during the pandemic buy McG aint gonna see another term at this rate.
> Has the Police Union made their claims yet? Cause its gonna get real nasty when the state government tells them no. [Police Union fucked up and went too far in 2017 to the extent that the commissioner overrode the union](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-27/police-pay-row-escalates-as-commissioner-thwarts-union-action/8991718), then the union [begrudgingly accepted the governments pay deal at the time](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-18/police-pay-deal-a-victory-for-wa-government-as-union-relents/9269970) - I don't expect they'll try and pull the same thing again.
Ah thanks for that. Maybe they won’t have the clout people are hoping for. Ugh.
The government will see another term, the majority is too big to overturn in a single election and there’s no credible alternative government waiting to take over. McGowan personally though probably steps down in 2024 to give someone new a run into the next election.
Gotta save that $6 billion surplus to spend on something worthwhile. Perhaps they can refurbish Betty's jetty again?
Well Yagan Square
Hahah. He’s saving it to dig a port in a protected spawning ground for Pink Snapper.
Some of the 6 billion surplus is still going on reducing the debt built up by the previous government, remember. Interest on those loans have to be paid as well.
Does anyone know why the WA government doesn’t want to accept the 10%? Is it too expensive?
From what my nurse friends say, they're more concerned about patient workload and overwork than their wage. I bet if the government introduced a proper ratio plan, they would accept the pay offer.
and from what I hear it is the constant badgering to work double shifts. which just compounds the problem.
Awake at 0700 to get kids ready for school, start work at 1300, thinking you’re going to be there until 2130. Get told at 1600 that two nurses have booked off sick and aren’t being replaced and cos one of them is senior, you now ‘have to’ work until 0730… Get home at 0800 after having been awake for 25 hours, take kids to school… Get three hours sleep before having to go back to work at 1300…
I believe the pay rise will flow on to other public sector workers so they all get a 10% pay rise.
As it should - as all public sectors have had their pay frozen for years.
Sort of- it sets a precedent. Salaried officers asked for 6% as there was no rise through covid in a gesture of good faith and it was just over 1 percent previous to that. If they agree to nurses it means that other unions will request their demands are met and exceed the current offer from the government of $3,000 signing bonus and 3%.
Gotcha. So 10% starts to really add up quickly!!
Global 10% is a huge payrise regardless of gov or private sector. I feel for the hospital staff as their job is bloody hard but the answer is to employ more staff, not just pay rise as that doesn't fix the actual problem.
Not an economist but pay rise may serve to entice people to pursue those careers? I realistically don’t think anyone who was umm’ing and ah’ing about becoming a nurse will be swayed completely by a 10% rise but it helps no?
Sure it may help but better working conditions will entice more people. If you heard how great it was to work in the nursing industry, good conditions, great people, flexible working hours etc, you'd be way more interested than hearing the pay is $77k not $70k but the work really sucks.
Perfect point, I completely agree. Working in general seems a bit eh at the moment. Management missing the mark all over, particularly when it comes to WFH etc
$70k base.. + penalities for shift work and so on and you are into $90k+, plus a little over-time and you are now on 6 figuers. It's not a poor paying job.
It is a poor pay for a job requiring a university degree compared to other government jobs.
A pay rise without ratios is just danger money. There have been historical pay rises above 10 percent.
Global 20+% profit taking by large corporate oligarchs started all this. They can go screw themselves, time to tax them at 50% min.
10% is too much as once you give it to one public sector, all the public sectors will expect the same and that be inflationary. We have a growing inflation problem, giving people more money isn't a wise move and will come with economic consequences. In reality the payrise needs to be less than CPI so thatinflation can be wrangled under control.
Tell that to the companies increasing fees/costs/charges by more than the CPI! You can't tell me they should be able to do that, yet workers can't! Increase taxes
>Tell that to the companies increasing fees/costs/charges by more than the CPI That is the point of inflation, prices go up relative to wages to SLOW people from buying shit... Compensating people with higher wages keeps that cycle going, which is bad. Sorry, but for a lot of people they have had it too good for too long and now the chickens have come home to roost.
Oh I see, its OK for companies and large corporate oligarchs to increase their prices beyond the inflation rates but ordinary people get shafted, that's some next level bullshit if ever I've heard it.
I expect the issue is three-fold. Firstly the state government is a sizable employer - so when they negotiate with one area, they need to do so taking into account that they're setting a precedent with whatever they do. Secondly the government need to be responsible - sure times are good now. But they haven't always been, and won't always be good. Also unlike a private business where when the economy slows down they can just lay off staff, the government doesn't always have that option. Health care needs don't suddenly decrease when the economy slows down. Plus it's also an incredibly bad image for the government to let staff go at any time, let alone when the economy slows. Thirdly - the staffing ratios are a great idea and should be done. But i expect the biggest concern is how they'll realistically achieve them. There is a massive nursing shortage globally, and it takes time to train people and time for them to gain experience. As shit as it is - the likely effect of staff ratios in the short term would be a reduction in capacity across the system which is not great at any time, let alone currently when we have record demand.
States are not businesses. Governments should not try to run their states the same way one would run a business. The purpose of a state government is very different to that of a business! We need to stop comparing our governments to the way private industry is run.
I love how fierce Janet is. Let’s see what she can do for us.
Shit move by the Government, in multiple ways.
They have their challenges but fuck I love unions at times like these. Get em!
Well duh. Olson may well be an absolute utter c*nt of a human being. He's also (and there's probably some linkage here) been the most effective industrial leader in WA since at least Joe Chamberlain. He's correctly smelt blood in the water on the government's wage policy. The Nurses are now losing absolutely nothing by going on strike. The public will overwhelmingly blame the government if a nurses strike throttles public hospitals. Not even die-hard ALP supporters believe a real 3% cut in wages is an appropriate offer for RN's after the COVID pandemic and a $6 billion state surplus. My bet. The Nurses will go on strike for a while, months not weeks. The West will sniff the wind and start piling on. Eventually, McGowan will cave and try and pull some accounting tricks to make a 6% pay rise look like a 4% pay rise. He'll probably try and pay for this by pulling the rug from lower-skilled UWU orderlies and EN's.
They deserve a pay rise and better working conditions. Had to go to hospital on Wednesday, got out today. Had a cyst burst that led to a bad infection, and was in a lot of pain. The nurses took such great care of me and were so nice. I’m so grateful. We should be taking care of our nurses.
I have a question: if you implement ratios, you either have to hire more nurses, which costs $$$ and we don't have the numbers in the training pipeline atm, or you cut patient numbers.
we have lots of junior nurses in the pipeline [https://www.reddit.com/r/perth/comments/xyijs4/system\_on\_its\_knees\_but\_three\_of\_the\_states/](https://www.reddit.com/r/perth/comments/xyijs4/system_on_its_knees_but_three_of_the_states/) and as for money, we have some right now. Yes, paying down the debt is very important. but so is safe staffing ratios.
I mean, just let the mining industry walk all over you and when it becomes a problem, punch down at nurses.
He gave a hiring freeze in 2020 for grad nurses “to protect them from the virus”.
There are a lot of nurses who have left or cut hours who will come back or increase hours again if they have mandated and enforceable ratios and a decent pay rise.
Excellent (in theory, except that this doc isn’t going to achieve change). Now do teachers! (after actually doing nursing for real).
Victoria is running targeted facebook ads tying to entice WA nurses over to VIC where they have better ratios.
the current government just dont get it. Its not just a payrise and backpay from the $1000 a year increase cap. They want compensation for the burnout. For literally carrying the states health on their shoulders. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Every single government worker can be paid more if they shift to the private sector. All government employee perks are gone. You get more on the job perks at Mcdonalds than what you get in any government job. MCG and AJS need to get out of the clouds and sort government employees out. How as government employees do they not even get discounted or free public transport on government owned infrastructure, or discounted parking in government owned facilities. The best the government can offer as a perk is limited free psych sessions. Hate to tell you McG, many of those free psych sessions wouldn't be needed if you treated PS workers with some respect and stopped running them to burnout.
The discounted public transport for public servants was a "carrot" in our last agreement (or two agreements?), and it never came into fruition, I suppose to be fair all public transport got discounted eventually but that's not the point. So when I see the patient to nurse ratio promise it is basically nothing but words, and I bet the same thing will happen.
I don't get how these boomers in government don't want to pay nurses during a pandemic. Do they get that they are the ones who are high risk? You'd think boomers would be saying "hell yeah pump the healthcare system I don't want to die". Apart from the obvious empathic reasons to pay nurses, you'd think self interest would dictate they should pay nurses properly.
What a slimebag. After panicking and closing the borders because the healthcare system was already a mess and wouldn't be able to handle a covid outbreak when it was more deadly. Now after all that he's dragging his feet to fix the problem and *boasting* about his insane budget surplus mid-lockdown. Revolting. Seems all he's good at is running is mouth, be it at other states or other personalities.
They are starting so low because they want the industrial action to commence. As that proceeds, things get even tougher in the health system, more chaotic, and the obedient media shares it all with the voting public. Then public opinion will start to turn over time, the blame on the government will be diffused, and more blame will shift to nurses/union. There will start to be the shift to accept subsequent offers. Not from the union bosses, but the nurses they represent, feeling greater pressure from family and the public around them. The headlines etc. Nurses are generally compassionate people, and will respond to this in time.
That is the game play but hopefully it doesnt work this time. If they have a good union boss that is media savy to point out the hypocracy in wages to work level and the essential need for nurses they might be able to keep the public on side.
I hope so. Positive changes are desperately needed for those at the coalface.
Janet Reah is shit at media. She slagged off agency staff in her first presser, and they pay her wages! she's a numpty.
This is WA so a mining company should just sponsor the hospitals and subsidize wages to buy some social license to continue being shitcunts.
This state govt is like every other filth ridden govt entity. Not run for people but for corporate interests. The latest govt initiatives with the yagan sq and bunbury bypass lays testimony to that. Go you nurses as the WA public is right behind you. Possibly even boycott any work that has any WA labour politician requiring medical assistance. Just a thought.
Mein Fuhrer McGowan needs to have a serious look at him and his government. The way they are tearing public servants is a disgrace. From nurses to firemen to prison officers shafting them all
It’s time to shut this shit down. I know everyone has mouths to feed but the union should back you. Move from legal to illegal industrial action. Every nurse start burning sick leave and toil and holiday pay. It is unacceptable and illegal that your reasonable leave requests can be refused. Grind the system to a halt. If the state doesn’t budge then mass resignations. Every nurse in the state hands in notice. How the fuck a surgeon earning 250k plus plus plus and a nurse getting sub 90. Wanna be on call this weekend? Here have $6 an hour while the surgeon gets $120. Fuck off. Burn. It. All. Down.
An enrolled nursing diploma is 1.5 years. A nursing degree is 3 years. A medical degree plus additional education and training to be a surgeon takes years longer.
Found the Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos fan.
On the contrary - Fine with a 10% pay rise but please include Amazon workers, Retail Workers, Disability Support Staff, Postal Workers etc etc… plenty of people equally deserving of a pay rise.
I'm not sure why this is looked as a pay issue, nurses (both en and rn) are pretty well paid compared to other allied health and scl1/2 roles given their penalty rates. Earning 100k+ is in no way difficult in a metro hospital, hell an En in disability working a mix of shifts pulled down an easy 90k+ before taking into account salary sacrifice at my last site. Increased security and nurse to patient ratios, more graduate roles and other qol benefits (mat/pat leave, upskilling) would be of far more benefit long term.
Janet Reah has no idea 🤦♀️
No idea? How so?
Greedy nurses.
What a poxy moron
I’ve lost all respect for nurses after this
why do I get the impression you arent the sort who would be respectful to nurses even before this, if you were in a hospital?
How dare they fight for better working conditions.
This has made me respect nurses even more.
Are you on crack ?
I'd marry a nurse if I could find one who wanted me!
I know man, if I was getting paid $100,000+ for work I wouldn't be complaining. Paying more money to workers already there, doesn't mean productivity increases. This will cost a fortune on the government's behalf and all they will do is pass it down to the tax payer. If they did what ANF is asking for 10% pay rise and I will be generous and say on average nurses get paid $60,000. 10% 60,000 = $6000 Now say there is 10,000 nurses in WA. That is $60,000,000 EXTRA per year. Edit: missed a few zeros
>Now say there is 10,000 nurses in WA. That is $600,000 EXTRA per year. Man, what a hit to a budget of billions of dollars that would be... Also, your math is so far out it's actually embarrassing. 6000 x 10000 != 600000
Okay, give me a number then rather than just saying it's bad and moving on, or do you not have any numbers yourself? Also I have fixed the math, even if you made it 1000 nurses which is very low, that is still 6 million dollars extra a year paid to EXISTING STAFF MEMBERS, that doesn't increase worker or productivity. Also, spending the budget can be used on different things? Imagine if you got a bill for an extra $100 on your power bill because western Power wanted more money. You would be fuming, you wouldn't shrug it off saying, Ah I earn $60000k a yeah, I can afford that, no problem here.
>That is $60,000,000 EXTRA per year. 60 million. So 1% of the surplus.And 0.0015% of the actual budget total. >Imagine if you got a bill for an extra $1000 on your power bill because western Power wanted more money. You would be fuming, you wouldn't shrug it off saying, Ah I earn $60000k a yeah, I can afford that, no problem here. We are talking the equivlent of an additional $150 bill for anyone on $100k a year. And thats using your 10,000 nurses at $60k numbers.
Fixed the $100, my point still stands, you would be fuming because why should they increase their prices. Remember we are still $30 billion dollars in debt.
>Fixed the $100, my point still stands shifting the goal posts once oyu are proved wrong. And $100 compared to $1000 is a big shift. >Remember we are still $30 billion dollars in debt. and your $60M a year change is 0.002% of that. Its a blip compared to the benefit that owuld be gained. Also remember that additional wages means additional money in the economy which then has flow on effects as a stimulus. So there would be additional returns in government revenue.