Months of organising by members will culminate in a national vote as The Lamp goes to press.
NSW nursing staff at Australian Red Cross Lifeblood along with other state and territories are considering voting no for a new national agreement over the coming weeks.
They want “respect” in the form of better pay, improved conditions, and protection of existing entitlements that Lifeblood management is seeking to erode.
A national meeting of members of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF) authorised the ANMF to lodge a dispute application with the Fair Work Commission if negotiations with Lifeblood fail to achieve a satisfactory result.
The online meeting of almost 200 registered nurses, enrolled nurses and assistants in nursing voted to start consultations across the nation about the types of protected industrial action they might take.
Protected action refers to industrial action that can legally be taken when bargaining for a new enterprise agreement is unsuccessful.
Majority vote of 99 per cent
A motion carried with a 99 per cent majority stated: “We call on Lifeblood to meaningfully address our concerns and resolve to continue to campaign for improved pay and conditions, and consider all means available in order to advance our claims.”
With negotiations stalling, the ANMF were compelled at the start of November to list the matter in the Fair Work Commission, with the case being heard by Deputy President Coleman. The ANMF were able to secure and claw back some improvements to pay and conditions right across the country. But for NSW members all of the cuts were not taken off the table.
Lifeblood staff collect blood, plasma, platelet and breast-milk donations for distribution to hospitals.
ANMF branches, including the NSWNMA in New South Wales, have been negotiating with Lifeblood management to replace state and territory-based agreements that expired years ago.
However, Lifeblood changed tack and now wants a first-ever national enterprise agreement to cover ANMF members in all states and territories.
Negotiations started in early 2023.
The motion carried by the second national members’ meeting in October rejected Lifeblood’s proposal to compress pay increments and prevent staff from progressing between sub-levels.
“This will create inequity among workers and does not recognise current employees’ experience and knowledge,” the motion said.
NSWNMA General Secretary Shaye Candish said Lifeblood’s proposed national agreement included an inadequate pay offer and cuts to conditions that would leave NSW nurses worse off.
For example, Lifeblood wants to slash public holiday entitlements for part time employees.
Inadequate pay offer, cuts to conditions
It also wants to cut the part-time public holiday benefit, which is provided in recognition that some part-time employees work a set pattern of days while others rotate, but enjoyment of the public holiday payments should be shared equally.
Cutting the benefit would cost a part-time RN as much as $3,478 in one year and $10,434 over three years.
Shaye said there should be no reductions to existing conditions and no employee should be worse off with a new national agreement.
“If Lifeblood wants to retain and attract skilled clinicians in its workforce, it must listen to and respect staff concerns, and do better.”
She said management had “consistently ignored and rebuffed” the NSWNMA in its many attempts to negotiate a new agreement since it expired in June 2021.
Management apparently was distracted by a wage theft scandal in which the Red Cross’s Humanitarian Services Division and Lifeblood Division were found to have underpaid more than 11,000 current and former employees.
Individual underpayments ranged from less than $100 to more than $20,000.
The Red Cross entered into ‘enforceable undertakings’ with the Fair Work Ombudsman to back-pay employees over $25 million in stolen wages.
Between 2010 and 2021, up to 1,160 Lifeblood employees were underpaid various leave entitlements, shiftwork loadings, public holiday loadings, overtime, redundancy entitlements, superannuation and minimum rates of pay totalling over $3.5 million, the Fair Work Ombudsman said.
Member leaders take grassroots views to national bargaining table.
The NSWNMA Lifeblood branch has grown rapidly during 2023 to cover 24 donor sites in NSW.
The branch has elected new officials and recruited 34 member leaders, who represent staff at donor sites and other work units.
Sixteen Lifeblood member leaders attended a customised campaign training day at NSWNMA Sydney headquarters in September.
It was the first time many had met in person, as campaigning is done mainly through WhatsApp Groups and Zoom meetings.
Clinical nurse educator Helen Gardiner is one of 10 NSWNMA member leaders who are also part of the union’s national bargaining team that meets with Lifeblood management.
“If you’re sitting at the bargaining table as I am, you know what’s happening in the negotiations and what Lifeblood is seeking,” she said.
“We have had 10 bargaining meetings so far. In the initial meetings, we (member leaders) mainly listened to what was being said.
“We’ve taken a much bigger part in the last few meetings, speaking up about our work at the donor centres and how the staff are feeling.”
Helen said the October national Zoom meeting had “an amazing sense of solidarity and unity. It showed how strongly we want to fight this fight.
“It was a really great meeting. There were a lot of questions; members felt very open to be able to ask honest questions and give honest answers.”
She said it was valuable to hear at the national meeting about working conditions and campaign developments from Lifeblood members in other states.
The Lifeblood NSW branch is running a successful campaign to get nursing staff interested and involved in union activity.
“We’ve got union member leaders dotted through all the donor centres, which means we can talk to the staff and explain what we as a union are doing and what we are fighting for,” Helen said.
“Every donor centre has its own union-led WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger group chat, so we can quickly communicate everything from our branch meetings into those groups.”