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Public hospitals in NSW face more industrial action from doctors fed up with low wages and unsafe conditions.
The NSW public hospital system has experienced its second health care practitioner strike this year. This time, it’s working doctors.
Despite being warned by the Industrial Relations Commission, doctors stopped work for three days last week in unprotected industrial action. Hospitals ran at public holiday staffing levels until 10pm last Thursday with reassurances from the Australian Salaried Medical Officers’ Federation (ASMOF) that patient care would still be safe.
It’s the second industrial blow to the NSW Government this year after hundreds of psychiatrists resigned over pay and conditions in what the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) called a system on the verge of collapse.
State government negotiations with the doctor’s union, ASMOF, broke down over the bid for a 30% pay rise and a guarantee of 10-hour breaks between shifts. The demands were repeatedly denied and deemed “not possible” according to the NSW Government.
ASMOF argues that the 30% increase is to raise doctors’ wages to be on par with their counterparts in other states.
“We don’t want to be the best paid doctors in Australia. We just don’t want to be the absolute worst,” the Junior Vice President of ASMOF Dr Tom Morrison said.
“The government has not, over many, many years come to the table to negotiate changes and it’s reached breaking point,” Dr Morrison said.
“I think fundamentally this is just about making sure the conditions are safe for doctors,” he said.
Doctors can earn much higher wages in the private system and the pay deal would attract more doctors to public hospitals and with that, a safer working environment,” Dr Morrison said.
“If I was in this job for the money, I could go into private practice,” Dr Tom Morrison said.
“Everyone I know who works in the public system, especially as a consultant, is doing it because they love the patients,” he said.
Dr Morrison is a neurosurgery registrar and like so many of his colleagues is expected to work very long hours with very little time off. He tells the story of being called back for an emergency operation after his shift finished, and only having an hour break.
“There are stories throughout the state of unsafe working hours and unsafe conditions,” he said.
“What we want to do is just have safe working conditions and a fair rate of pay so we can give the patients the care they deserve,” he said.
Dr Morrison said the Medical Officer Award has not been updated since before he was born in 1989. He said the low wage drives interns and other staff interstate.
“I could up and go to Brisbane right now where they’re running advertisements for people like myself to come,” he said.
“I get a $10 000 relocation bonus and my base salary would increase by 30%.”
“More than 10% of the available internship positions weren’t filled this year. And it’s because people are voting with their feet. They’re going to other states to take up better offers,” he said.
“I don’t begrudge them for that, but it’s unsustainable because if the interns aren’t coming through, they don’t become residents. They don’t become registrars, and the people who are left in the system have to work even harder to pick up all the gaps,” Dr Morrison said.
NSW hospitals are facing a wearing down of a safe standard of care if the government doesn’t create wage parity with other states.
“I think we’ll continue to see the erosion of safe care that we already have. I think people will leave for other states. I think the best doctors will not come and work in NSW and that will flow on to care for patients,” Dr Morrison said.
“I honestly cannot understand the government’s rationale,” Dr Morrison said.
“They’ve not made us any offer. They’ve not made any meaningful progress on safe working conditions,” he said.
“I cannot understand why the Chris Minns government would want to have the worst paid doctors in Australia,” he said.
“I think it’s now in the Premier’s hands to fix this crisis”.
NSW Health Minister Ryan Park, in an interview with the ABC said the problem of years of stagnant wages can’t be fixed overnight. He also seemed more sympathetic to meeting the needs of junior doctors.
“We can’t simply play catch up of over a decade of wage suppression that’s occurred here in NSW because of a wages cap in a single year. That is not feasible,” Mr Park said.
“But, we have said, particularly for junior doctors who we understand where there’s considerable gaps in their pay here in NSW compared to other jurisdictions, that we are willing to sit down and try and work through this issue.”
He said the government will continue to work through the issue with the Industrial Relations Commission.
“We wish this strike action wouldn’t have taken place, we don’t believe it should have taken place but that’s a matter for the union,” Mr Park told the ABC.
“We can’t get to 30%, that is simply not possible, we have increased their pay last year, we put 10.5% on the table for the next three years but we are willing to continue those discussions, particularly in relation to junior doctors where we can see very clearly that there is a significant gap,” Mr Park said.
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I am contracted for 0.5 fte as staff specialist, so get paid for only 20 hrs, while rostered to be on-call without allowance one day every week, and if a colleague is away then maybe on call even on alternate days. Isn’t this exploitation? Even that pay rate is pathetic, some of the tradies’ hourly rate is more than my pay rate.
Victoria beckons; shame on NSW!
We are headed towards an NHS like disaster rapidly. No politician will tell the public that higher taxes are required for world class medical care. The GP Medicare model has failed (excepting the owners of GP practices), who like the US model, ostensibly provide a service while profiting off the suffering of others. Add known corruption and mafia hands and you are getting fleeced. The national pride refuses to admit that the lunacy of this model is not public health care. The Federal Government is rumoured to want a US medical system. 10,000 GP shortfall predicted by 2030. Just wait for how bad it will be. Meanwhile, for whatever reason a doctor has decided to become a doctor, the Australian tradition is to pay the mediocre wages while they consume the best years of their lives while these young doctors strive to offer you loving and professional care at the expense of their youth. Is this what Australia wants? Does the public want to demand improvement? No, Tall Poppies are reviled and inaction is the way of the developing world, which Australia is soon to be a part of. Strike, and Strike again until NSW comes to your terms Doctors!
This issue of ignoring the needs of our frontline medical workforce has been ongoing for too long where has our humanity for each other gone. Governments need to stop spending money on warfare and utilise the money looking after the citizens of Australia. If government would give pay increases to our medical workforce as they do for themselves it would be a better place for all concerned.
It’s obvious from all the images I see that it is the junior doctors most involved in this dispute.
Here we go again! Overworked; not paid for overtime; treated disrespectfully by managers and generally not supported. This has happened at regular intervals in NSW with a new junior doctor crisis every decade or so.
When will NSW Health learn? You can’t promote people into middle-management positions without training them properly. This includes making sure that they understand the importance of appropriate working conditions, ongoing support (in-hours) for professional development and the fostering (not insulting) of a community of scholars among medical practitioners.
The money is a token of respect. The other issues; just as important, need constant attention.
Good for them. Drs starting out who don’t have many options have been taken advantage of for many years.
It is just a pity that the government and the community take it for granted that Drs will always choose to work regardless of the effect on them, their family and their patients.
Refusing to do this in unsafe conditions is a strong statement of the level of commitment, dedication and willingness to accept the almost overwhelming pressure of responsibility that is required of all members of our profession.
There were similar issues here in QLD about 20yrs ago. Industrial action was also required and many VMOs resigned from QLD health.
I hope that the NSW government and wider community has the sense to see that drs cannot yet be replaced by algorithms and AI.
Ryan Park is telling fibbers again. The pay increase requested is over several years, not one year, as he well know. Likewise, doctors in NSW did not receive a pay increase last year. The last pay increase was in 2023. It was sub-inflation. Staff specialists in NSW are not paid at all for call backs or overtime; it’s a fixed salary, no matter the hours worked, or when they’re worked.
The government has presented a draft award which offers no pay increase, a provision for staff specialists to work up to 80 hours a week, but with no increase in pay beyond the fixed salary, a clause allowing immediate dismissal without being able to use sick leave if one becomes unwell, the provision that doctors could be transferred anywhere in NSW as the government sees fit and certainly no reform of the odious and humiliating TESL system, which has now become nothing more than arrant wage theft. No one would be willing to accept employment under these conditions, let alone people working in the stressed, overwrought environment of NSW Health.