The union’s pay campaign is winning increasing support from state Labor MPs but some have refused even to meet with nurses.

In a social media broadcast to members from the parliament house picket line, NSWNMA General Secretary Shaye Candish said, “We’ve been talking with MPs all over the state. Momentum is on our side. We have lots of support from inside the Labor caucus and we need you to keep that pressure on.”

“We know that this government does not want to sit down and negotiate pay with us and we must change their mind on that.”

“You having those conversations with your MPs and telling them that they must support a 15 per cent pay increase is critical to that.”

Speaking to nurses and others at the parliament house demonstration, Shaye urged female MPs to support the biggest female workforce in NSW in its campaign for pay equity.

“We have MPs refusing to meet with nurses and midwives in their own communities where nurses are going to talk about severe understaffing, closures of mental health services and of maternity services,” she said.

“We urge the female MPs in parliament to stand up and fight for our gender and fight for pay equity like they were elected to do.”

In the same broadcast to members, NSWNMA President O’Bray Smith said union representatives got “the cold shoulder” when they went to parliament house to lobby MPs in December.

Now, MPs are “coming up to us and saying, ‘We’ve got to look after the nurses and midwives, we’ve got to look after the health system. That’s our core business, that’s what we should be doing as Labor’”.

She thanked members for their hard work in lobbying MPs, adding, “It is starting to shift and we couldn’t have done it without you.”

O’Bray said however that some state MPs “are just not jumping onboard” the pay and staffing campaign.

They are not doing their job

She told the rally that some state MPs in the Maitland area had said they did not support a 15 per cent pay rise for nurses and midwives.

“Can you believe that the same nurses and midwives that were turning out at their election to help them hand out, had to stand in the office and hear, ‘You don’t deserve your pay rise.’

“These are the people that are representing us, these are the people that are supposed to be making decisions about what’s best for the community, and yet they’re letting the health system remain in crisis and go downhill quick.

“They are not doing their job.”

O’Bray said Planning Minister Paul Scully, the member for Wollongong, had told the NSWNMA he did not believe the pay campaign was a gender issue – despite a widening gender pay gap in NSW.

“I think you can say that when you’re a man in parliament, can’t you?” O’Bray said.

“What did Paul Scully say next? ‘You don’t deserve a pay rise because I haven’t had a pay rise.’

“Poor Paul Scully on over $330,000 a year doesn’t have a pay rise so the nurses and midwives on $72,000 a year have to continue to suffer.

“How disconnected is this government? How lacking in insight into the struggles the nurses and midwives that keep this community going have to pay their bills.”

O’Bray urged members to visit their MPs and “put them on the spot”.

“Ask them, ‘Are you supporting a 15 per cent pay rise? Are you supporting pay equity with the other states?’”

40,000 community members call for PHS pay rise

Petition to parliament in support of our Public Health System pay claim breaks record.

An electronic petition signed by almost 40,000 people calling on the state government to deliver a fair pay rise for public sector nurses and midwives was debated in the NSW Parliament in March.

The e-petition, created by NSWNMA member Dustin Levick, gained more than 20,000 signatures in four days and broke the record for the fastest-growing Legislative Assembly petition.

A member of the NSWNMA Air Ambulance branch, Dustin said achieving interstate pay parity was essential for attracting and retaining nurses and midwives in NSW to ensure safe, quality patient care.

“I cannot sit by and watch the quality of care continue to deteriorate, and it has deteriorated significantly, because we cannot attract nurses and midwives to NSW. At the end of the day the public pays the price of the government’s inaction in the form of deteriorating care in our public hospitals,” he said.

“I started the petition so the government can hear from their community. The community clearly wants the government to invest in their health system, and that means investing in their nurses and midwives.

“We will not stop fighting this fight until the government listens. Nurses know what patients need and we cannot give it to them in this failing system.”

NSWNMA General Secretary, Shaye Candish, applauded Dustin for garnering community support and highlighting the plight of nurses and midwives.

“We’re seeing increasing strain and stress on our hospitals. The latest Bureau of Health Information quarterly report, shows there were more than 15,000 additional ED attendances between October and December last year, compared to the previous quarter. Triage category 2 and 3 presentations both increased across the state, and there was a 6 per cent rise in the number of patients who left an ED before completing treatment.

“It’s clear our hospitals are operating in overdrive, and nurses and midwives are at the forefront of this, trying to treat patients in a timely manner while constantly understaffed and under-resourced. This government must fix this urgently – the patients of NSW deserve nothing less.”