The EBA meeting the other day did not have the hoped for outcome, although happily it did not degenerate into the shouting match some of us feared. Management laid it on the line apparently, but the QNU didn’t budge and are now encouraging their members to take industrial action.
There was a report about it in the local paper, complete with the usual misleading reporting that is apparent when you work behind the scenes. It published a comment from a nurse about money wasted on financial analysis. Where on earth did she get this from? Even if money had been spent on it, I think it would have been a pretty sensible investment in the circumstances, but the fact is the financial advice was from two qualified accountants who sit on the board, the honorary treasurer and chairperson. Maybe they forgot to send their bill?
After the meeting I saw a lot of long faces amongst the nurses, worried about the future. I think the QNU is doing really badly by them. One of the RNs confided to me that it seemed like any moderate, reasonable view is ignored. The union is backing a small handful of very vocal employees that are refusing to compromise on the pay issue regardless of what it might cost the organisation. You want to support the nurses, the work they do deserves to be rewarded but it is difficult to sympathise with this mentality.
In a wages comparison they don’t appear that badly off. They are paid above award, and well above the nurses at other community hospices (one in Toowoomba, one on the Gold Coast). They are paid marginally less than the local private hospital, but are demanding equal pay to the higher paid public sector. And I’ve been told that working conditions in a public hospital are much harder than those at the hospice.
Sadly it all begins to look like greed and self-interest, which is so wrong because many of the nurses are the most caring, intelligent and respectable people I’ve met.