EB7 now in your hands
Published: 9 June 2009
Public sector nurses and midwives are being asked to vote on a 12.5% wage rise and other conditions on offer in Queensland Health’s proposed EB7 agreement.
This offer is the culmination of months of negotiations and years of policy development by members and branches at QNU Annual Conference.
These negotiations took place amid a deteriorating economic environment with a deficit budget to be handed down in mid June.
Now, with support from QNU members at Report Back Meetings in May for the formal offer to proceed to ballot, it’s up to all Queensland Health nurses and midwives to determine whether the proposed agreement is in the best interests of the majority.
Members have been informed every step of the way in the development of this offer, through regular newsletters, journal and website articles and member meetings, we’ve communicated the key issues since the QNU and Queensland Health first started negotiations in October 2008.
While our EB6 agreement had a nominal expiry date of 26 March 2009, Queensland Health’s current offer maintains a 1 April 2009 operative date for the EB7 agreement. This means that if the current proposed agreement is approved at ballot the first wage increase of 4.5% will be backdated to 1 April this year.
The delay in negotiations was due to the Queensland state election period, where the government, in caretaker mode, was unable to give instructions on any formal offer.
Now with an offer at hand Queensland Health and Mater Public nurses and midwives stand to be among the highest paid in the country in most classifications if they approve the proposed EB7 agreement.
This is a significant reversal of quite recent history where for many years Queensland public sector nurses and midwives sat at the lower end of the wages scale.
It was under our EB6 agreement, where we achieved a 23% payrise, that we really got the ball rolling. If this EB7 agreement is approved, it will mean that by April 2011 Queensland Health nurses and midwives will have received a 35.5% pay increase in less than six years.
In this current economic climate that’s a considerable outcome, particularly in light of Tasmania’s recent freeze on public sector wage rises, including those for nurses and midwives.
But a wage rise isn’t the only thing we’ve achieved in the proposed EB7 agreement.
For EB6 and again for EB7 the QNU and Queensland Health agreed that a partnership approach was the best way to address nursing, midwifery and health issues, and an Interest Based Bargaining (IBB) approach was the best way to progress negotiations.
Subsequently, the QNU and Queensland Health agreed under EB7 that work should continue through a peak body to advance the interests and issues of the public sector nursing and midwifery workforce.
While the body has changed names from the Nurses’ Interest Based Bargaining Implementation Group (NIBBIG) to the Nurses’ and Midwives EB7 Implementation Group, both parties remain committed to its ongoing role.
Under EB7 we agreed that further work by the body is required around a number of critical areas including the Business Planning Framework and workloads, Models of Nursing and Midwifery, Working arrangements, and classification and career structures (including those for Enrolled Nurses and Nurse Unit Managers).
So as members can see the QNU, through the Nurses’ and Midwives EB7 Implementation Group, still has a means of addressing critical nursing and midwifery issues now and in the coming years through these four priority areas.
The QNU strives to promote and defend the interests of member nurses and midwives and I believe we have met our goal with this package of wages and conditions that is being presented.
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