It seems the management of Ramsay Health Care won’t take no for an answer.

In the dying days of 2024,  Ramsay Health Care made another unsuccessful attempt to force a substandard enterprise agreement (EA) onto their NSW nursing and midwifery workforce.

The company put its preferred EA to a vote of employees for an unprecedented third time.

And for a third time, nurses and midwives voted ‘No’.

In this latest ballot, which closed on 17 December, 79 per cent of eligible employees voted, and 55 per cent voted ‘No’.

The vote followed a 24-hour strike by nurses and midwives at 17 Ramsay hospitals across the state on November 26.

Believed to be Australia’s biggest private sector health strike, it was part of an ongoing campaign in support of a 20 per cent wage increase over three years and safer staffing levels.

The Ramsay campaign is a major part of an unprecedented level of industrial action over pay and conditions at private providers, including Healthscope in NSW.

General Secretary Shaye Candish said the November 26 strike followed 20 months of talks and 18 bargaining meetings involving a NSWNMA team that included union officials and hospital branch delegates.

She said the NSWNMA campaign of strikes and work bans had forced the company to lift its pay offer from 9 per cent over three years in the first vote, to 16 per cent over three years in the most recent ballot.

However, negotiations fell through late last year when Ramsay backed away from safe staffing clauses that had been agreed in principle.

Lack of progress on ratios or safe staffing led the NSWNMA bargaining team to recommend a ‘No’ vote to members for a third time.

“A majority of members voted to support this recommendation despite a very strong push by Ramsay management to persuade staff to vote yes, including dangling an offer of backpay close to Christmas,” Shaye said.

“Last financial year, Ramsay turned over almost $900 million in profit. We know they can afford to pay our hardworking nurses and midwives what they’re worth, by funding a pay rise that addresses inflation and cost of living pressures,” she added.

The NSWNMA wrote to Ramsay seeking to re-open negotiations in February.

Standing up to corporate greed

During the November 26 strike, about 600 Ramsay staff closed Elizabeth Street in Sydney’s CBD as they marched from Hyde Park to the Sheraton-on-the-Park Hotel where the company was holding its annual general meeting.

About 80 Ramsay nurses who are Ramsay shareholders entered the AGM wearing their NSWNMA scrubs, while the rest rallied outside.  Two NSWNMA member shareholders asked questions of the Ramsay board  (see story page 8).

Some long-serving Ramsay nurses and midwives are shareholders because the company’s late founder Paul Ramsay awarded shares to his employees in the early 2010s.

Ramsay nurses from the Illawarra, Southern Highlands and Shoalhaven regions boarded buses to join the Sydney rally.

Among them was Carlie Morgan, secretary of the NSWNMA branch at Wollongong Private Hospital.

She told the rally, “I have never felt prouder. Proud to be a nurse, proud to be associated and working with so many strong and resilient people, and proud to be standing here in solidarity with you all to show Ramsay how we stand up to corporate greed.”

When interviewed by WIN TV News, she said, “We thought we were making progress in negotiations and we managed to reach a bit of a verbal agreement regarding some safe staffing clauses. However, when we met with Ramsay again that offer was revoked.”

Renae Maher, NSWNMA Branch President at Albury Wodonga Private Hospital, said, “As a female-dominated workforce, we need  to close the gap. We need ratios, we need fair pay.”

She added, “We need our staff on the border not going across to Victoria where they got a 28.5 per cent pay increase over four years. We are losing staff.”