QBC needs to respect nursing values
Published: 19 August 2011
Queensland Baptist Care (QBC) is proposing to reduce the conditions of nurses in exchange for a small pay rise.
The latest enterprise agreement offer is for a 3 per cent increase in 2011 and a 3.5 per cent increase in 2012.
However, QBC will increase the wage offer to 3.5 per cent in 2011 and 4 per cent in 2012 if nurses give up certain conditions in the current agreement.
This is an extremely disappointing development. The changes that QBC are seeking are totally unacceptable.
QBC’s approach to industrial negotiations are a long way from their claim that ‘staff are not just workers, they are family’.
Cleaning duties
The current agreement requires nurses to perform “Incidental and Peripheral tasks – provided that such duties are not designed to promote deskilling”.
In practice, this has meant that nurses will perform duties that are associated with their standard nursing duties, such as cleaning up a spill or assisting with an activity if there is time.
QBC now proposes to remove the words “provided that such duties are not designed to promote deskilling”, and insert the following:
“Such duties may include, but are not limited to, maintaining the amenity of resident areas and assisting residents with their bodily or social needs, for example, cleaning up spills, other light cleaning, assistance in therapy programs etc.”
We believe such deliberately vague language is an attempt to compel nurses to perform non-clinical duties.
For example, qualified nursing staff who provide specialist nursing care could be asked to perform such duties as cleaning toilets, washing clothes, mopping floors or setting and cleaning tables, when these nurses could be using that time to fulfill the specialist nursing care needs of residents.
Voluntarily assisting to clean up spills or other duties which are truly incidental and peripheral to nursing duties is one thing.
However, it is quite a different thing to mount an attack on the nursing role by putting these other duties into the agreement.
As the QNU’s Your Work, Your Time, Your Life survey recently showed, aged care nurses are already so busy conducting nursing duties that they have little enough time to adequately fulfill the nursing role.
At a time when aged care needs more nursing, it will only detract from nurses’ ability to provide high quality nursing care if they are forced to clean and perform any number of other unspecified duties to maintain resident areas.
It also threatens to undermine nurses’ ability to assess residents care needs and plan care, as well as having a negative impact on infection control.
Career paths
In the current agreement, there is a requirement to have a minimum specific number of RN level 2s and AIN level 3s at each facility.
This ensures that there is a career path for AINs and RNs, and it assists to provide the right skills-mix to provide quality nursing care.
QBC now wants to remove this requirement, so that if an employee leaves the organisation, QBC is not required to fill their position with a nurse of the same level.
Unpaid training
Your current agreement has a clause that states:
“Training may be undertaken either on or off the job. Where training is on the job, it will be paid at ordinary rates applicable to the work otherwise performed. The employer may require an employee to spend an equivalent period of unpaid time in training up to a maximum of 2 hours of the employee’s time per month.”
The current clause is a reflection of the old Nurses Aged Care Award – State 2005 provision whereby the employer could provide up to 24 hours training per year, and employees could be required to do the same amount of training in their own time.
The QNU’s log of claims in this round of negotiations sought payment for all mandatory training and meetings.
Many other aged care employers have accepted and incorporated this principle into agreements, where it has been agreed that if it is compulsory for employees to attend training then it is considered “mandatory” and therefore is paid.
QBC’s initial response to our claim was to leave the clause as it is.
They have now changed their position, and want to vary sub-clause 11.1.4 to state that employees can be required on three days per year to attend up to eight hours of training in a day – without being paid!
If QBC won’t stand up for its own values, we will!
QBC’s industrial strategy violates its own values and Philosophy of Care.
QBC’s proposed changes are not the changes of an employer who seeks “to acknowledge each person’s value and to recognise their rights as individuals of worth”.
These changes devalue nurses and ignore their rights as professionals.
These changes will not, as the QBC Philosophy of Care professes, “provide a high quality of care for those in need in our community”.
These changes will reduce the quality of nursing care in QBC facilities.
As the Productivity Commission’s report into aged care recently acknowledged, the aged care sector needs to progress to a modern industry with competitive wages and skilled nursing staff.
QBC’s wage offer is far from competitive, and its proposed changes will lower the quality of care by deskilling nurses at a time when much more nursing is required.
Well, if the QBC won’t stand up for its own principles, we will.
We are now appealing to QNU members – particularly QBC employees – to call on QBC to uphold its own values by paying a fair wage increase of at least 4.5 per cent per year without undermining the quality of nursing care by reducing the nursing role.
Email the QBC CEO, board members, and Human Resources Manager, expressing your dissatisfaction with the QBC industrial strategy of significantly diminishing nursing in QBC care.
QBC nurses and residents deserve much better.
Get involved in the QBC campaign
The best way to secure a fair agreement is by showing your support through action. The participation of members in industrial campaigns is critical to securing a fair deal.
As part of our campaign for fair wages and conditions for QBC nurses, we are considering activities such as street stalls, getting signatures on letters or petitions, a rally outside a QBC facility, and so forth—and we would like you to get involved and bring your colleagues.
To register your interest in participating in any of these activities, and to receive updates on the campaign, please call QNU Organiser Paul Mitchell on 3840 1444 or email pmitchell@qnu.org.au
www.qnu.org.au/respectnursingvalues
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