Kate Hagan
February 24, 2012
Elective surgery will be cancelled at three hospitals this morning and nurses warn this will extend to an additional three hospitals each day until the state government agrees to settle the dispute.
ELECTIVE surgeries will be cancelled at the Royal Melbourne, Dandenong and Western hospitals from today as hundreds of nurses walk off the job from 8am in an effort to force the state government to settle their long-running industrial dispute.
The action follows the government's failure to agree by a deadline of 5pm yesterday for an independent umpire to decide all of the unresolved issues in their enterprise bargaining negotiations, including nurse/patient ratios.
Nurses have warned that the cuts will extend to an additional three hospitals each day until the government agrees to a process to settle the dispute.
Health Minister David Davis said the action put patients at risk and he was supporting an urgent application to Fair Work Australia today for orders to stop it.
He said that the government would go to the Federal Court to seek to enforce the orders if nurses ignored them, risking individual fines of up to $6600 and up to $33,000 for the union.
''The ANF has a track record of ignoring the orders of the independent umpire and that concerns us very much,'' he said.
Mr Davis said elective surgeries would be cancelled due to the nurses' action because there would be inadequate staff to care for patients when they returned to wards. ''There will also be an impact on [emergency departments] if patients can't be moved effectively into beds in the hospital,'' he said.
Nurses voted at a meeting on Tuesday to reduce staffing to night-shift levels for up to four hours on morning and afternoon shifts at hospitals to highlight what they say would be the effect of cuts planned by the government.
For a general surgical ward at a major metropolitan hospital, one nurse is rostered for every four patients during the day and one for every eight at night.
ANF state secretary Lisa Fitzpatrick said Mr Davis was wasting taxpayers' money on legal fees rather than agreeing to a process for an independent umpire to resolve the dispute.
Nurses fear the government is following a strategy outlined in a leaked cabinet document to force them to arbitration to secure $104 million in cuts.
Mr Davis said the government had committed to respond to ANF proposals for a mechanism to settle the dispute by early next week.
Nurses, who are seeking an 18.5 per cent pay rise over three years and eight months, retain their current conditions until a new deal is struck. The government is offering a 2.5 per cent annual rise, with any further increases to be offset by productivity measures.
Mr Davis said the Health Department had estimated that the ANF's log of claims would cost hospitals an extra $1.7 billion a year, including $470 million on wages.
''In these economic times we think the claim is excessive, and does not provide any realistic productivity offset,'' he said.
Ms Fitzpatrick said the costing appeared to be based on the union's original claim, which it had since revised, and the union was prepared to negotiate.
She disputed claims that seven operations had been cancelled at Dandenong Hospital on Tuesday due to inadequate notice from nurses attending a union meeting, and said hundreds of patients were missing out on surgery there due to budget cuts. ''The minister should be ashamed about what has happened to those patients … and he should stop being so opportunistic and inflammatory,'' she said.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/surgery-cancelled-as-nurses-walk-off-job-20120223-1tqmv.html#ixzz1nLF2jlgq
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