TriCare agreement still not fair
Published: 20 October 2011
Months after we launched our Be Fair TriCare campaign, QNU members there are yet to gain fair wages and conditions. TriCare nurses haven’t received a pay rise since July 2009 due to drawn-out negotiations where the employer has made a number of substandard agreement offers to nurses.
In August exhausted nurses desperate for a wage rise voted "yes" at ballot to TriCare’s third proposed agreement.
Out of approximately 1200 employees, 518 voted. There were 306 ‘Yes’ votes, 191 ‘No’ votes, and 21 informal votes.
In September the agreement was given to Fair Work Australia (FWA) to determine if it meets the requirements set out under the Fair Work Act 2009 (the national workplace law).
The QNU has raised concerns with FWA that nurses are worse off under the endorsed agreement than under the Nurses Award 2010 – which sets out the minimum wages and conditions that can be offered to aged care nurses and which is the basis against which all agreements are measured.
FWA may now do one of the following:
- Ask TriCare to amend the agreement so it is at least as good as the award.
- Force TriCare to attend a hearing with the QNU and other unions about the agreement.
- Ask the QNU and TriCare to renegotiate the agreement.
Given the uncertainty of the situation, TriCare employees could well be forced to wait even longer for a wage rise.
At the time of printing this newsletter, FWA was yet to make a decision about the agreement.
Contact:
Phone: