Royal Hobart Hospital Nurses and Midwives Voting on Industrial Action
11 May 2022
Door Stop
Where: RHH Liverpool Street Entrance
When: TODAY – Wednesday 11 May at 3:15pm
Who: ANMF Tasmanian Branch Secretary Emily Shepherd and Nurses
The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation Tasmanian Branch (ANMF) will be holding a mass member meeting at the Royal Hobart Hospital (RHH) today (Wednesday 11 May) to seek members’ direction on taking industrial action to have their sustained and unreasonable workloads addressed.
The ANMF raised a workload grievance on behalf of members in January 2022, following borders reopening on 15 December 2021, due to significant workload pressures brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic in addition to the workloads which were already present.
“Members are quite literally at breaking point; they are burning out due to the government reliance on already understaffed health workforce to staff a larger health system with more services and even less staff,” said ANMF Tasmanian Branch Secretary Emily Shepherd.
“The fact that the workload dispute has been in the Tasmanian Industrial Commission since January 2022, with no tangible outcomes to address our members concerns, leads to the conclusion, that either the government is not listening, or it doesn’t care about our members safety and wellbeing.”
ANMF members’ industrial campaign in 2018 was titled Recruit Retain Recognise as members could foresee the nursing and midwifery crisis coming. The government didn’t act then, and they still are not now!
If this government valued nurses and midwives, they would take steps to make them the best paid in the country to assist with recruitment and retention, instead of being the worst paid, they would also pay them the COVID-19 allowance immediately and backdate it to 15 December 2021. They would actually look at what other assistance can be given to a nursing and midwifery workforce that are tired of being taken advantage of to prop up an under resourced health system.
Members will vote on whether to take industrial action or not and also discuss the types of action that they propose take, including a ban on overtime and double shifts, which the government is constantly relying on to run the Tasmanian health system.
-End-
Media contact:
Emily Shepherd, ANMF Tasmanian Branch Secretary
Mobile: 0400 884 021
Email: Emily.Shepherd@anmftas.org.au