The Queensland union movement has warned the state’s conservative government it will be in for a “hell of a bloody fight” if it pursues threats to strip nurses and midwives of back pay should they enact their legal right to strike.
A pay dispute between the Liberal National party government and the Queensland Nurses and Midwives’ Union (QNMU) is ongoing after their previous enterprise agreement expired on 31 March.
The QNMU secretary, Sarah Beaman, said it had rejected the government’s latest offer for a new agreement, which included an offer to backdate wage increases on the condition nurses and midwives do not undertake protected industrial action in May.
Speaking in front of St John’s Cathedral in Brisbane during the city’s Labour Day march on Monday, the Queensland Council of Unions general secretary, Jacqueline King, said government officials had “put those proposals on the table” amid pay negotiations with nurses and midwives.
“If the LNP government wants to attack the rights of workers to strike, then we will have that discussion and we will have that debate with them,” King said.
“It is the right of every worker in Australia to take protective industrial action … and if the government seeks to change the laws on that, they’ll have a hell of a bloody fight on their hands.”
The dispute comes as the QNMU seeks to hold the premier, David Crisafulli, to his commitment to maintain nation-leading salaries and conditions for public sector nurses and midwives.
While Beaman said the offered wage increase of 3% in the first year, 2.5% in the second year and 2.5% in the third year was “an improvement”, she maintained it would “not achieve nation-leading wages by the end of the agreement for a majority of nurses and midwives”.
“We also hold significant concerns that Queensland Health is proposing to remove or lessen many existing conditions,” Beaman said.
King said the standoff may be a sign of things to come. “Teachers, police, firefighters [agreements] are up at the end of June, and then there is a whole raft of other workers that will follow from there, all the way through to September,” the union leader said.
“If this is the first part of their offer and this is their counter-offer … then it doesn’t bode well for the rest of the sector.”
King said more than 260,000 workers would be affected as bargaining ramps up across the state, with public sector unions rejecting the Crisafulli government’s wage rise of 2.67% per annum for the next three years as “low-ball wage rises”.
The Queensland health and ambulance services minister, Tim Nicholls, did not respond directly to the QNMU’s claims of threats against industrial action, but said the government was acting “in good faith”.
“The Crisafulli government is committed to delivering nation-leading wages and conditions for Queensland’s nurses and midwives as part of healing the Queensland health crisis and with our offer on the table we continue to engage in good faith to reach an agreement,” he said.
