Tamworth nurses to walk off the job next week in first strike in decade

Nearly every member of the Tamworth branch of the NSW Nurses and Midwives' Association voted on Tuesday to take protected industrial action on February 15, as part of a statewide wave of strikes.

Some 96.4 per cent of the branch voted on Zoom to walk off the job at the Tamworth hospital from 7am until 11am.

Branch president, Matthew Cartan, said the extraordinarily high support for strike action reflected the fact that nurses were just fed up.

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"Everyone's just over it. Everyone talks to their friends at work. They know how everyone's all run down," he said.

"Mostly our whole life's just been work, sleep and food shopping, that's it. That's what our life's consisted of for the last year-and-a-half to two years."

Nurses across New South Wales will next week demand mandated nurse-to-patient ratios for every shift, a policy that exists in Queensland and Victoria. They also want a pay rise of above 2.5 per cent. Inflation is currently running at about 3.5 per cent.

A spokesperson for NSW Health said the department acknowledges the health workforce has worked tirelessly during the two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The current award ratio framework was adopted by NSW Health and the Nurses and Midwives Association with the support of the Industrial Relations Commission in 2010-11," the spokesperson said.

She said that the "flexible staff-to-patient-ratio" system currently used by the service is a "multifaceted approach" that allows managers to adjust staffing levels depending on the care needs of patients.

"This model helps to ensure the right number of staff in the right place at the right time," she said.

Mr Cartan said patient ratios would reduce the number of deaths in hospitals, and improve other patient outcomes.

But the state hasn't listened to the union for a decade, he said.

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"The premier keeps saying that we're doing a good job, that we're coping more than well enough, which we're not. We're short-staffed, we've been short-staffed before COVID even hit," he said.

"They've known for years we're been short-staffed."

Armidale's union branch voted to strike for eight hours at the city's hospital.

Some hospitals in Sydney have voted to walk off the job for as long as 24 hours.

No hospital will completely close as a result of the strike action with skeleton nursing staff to remain on duty, and arrangements will be made to allow emergency departments to continue to operate.

Tamworth hospital will go onto the same staffing levels as it would during night duty, Mr Cartan said.

"We're not forcing anyone to go on strike," he said.

"Everyone's there to make their own judgement. We'll just keep a skeleton staff there as always. Skeleton staff is essentially night duty staff. If they believe night duty staff levels are safe enough then that's okay for the AM shift."

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The union will also hold a rally in Tamworth on Tuesday, one of several to be held in regional centres across the state.

The strike will be held on the first sitting of the state parliament in 2022.

It will be the first statewide strike by the nurses union since 2013.

Mr Cartan said Tamworth's was the city's first walk-out since November 24, 2010.

If they don't achieve their aims they could go even further, he said.

"At the moment we're just going to wait and see what the government says, but it could go further than this," he said.

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A spokesperson for NSW Health said that there are more nurses and midwives in NSW public hospitals than at any other time in history.

Between 2012 and 2021, the nursing workforce and midwifery workforce in NSW increased by 9,599 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff, or 23 per cent, she said.

Armidale nurses flagged that they could take the industrial action earlier this week after the local hospital was left without a single doctor for more than a dozen hours on the weekend.

Tamworth's paramedics went on strike for better pay and conditions last year, refusing to pick up any patients except in the most critical and life-threatening cases.

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