There has been an outpouring of anger by nurses and midwives in New South Wales following the long-awaited Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) decision on NSW public system nurses and midwives’ pay.
Media reports and Labor MPs proclaimed that nurses and midwives would receive “an historic 28 per cent pay rise”. However, this 28 per cent was only granted to Assistants in Nursing, who make up only 3 per cent of the nursing and midwifery workforce.
The IRC granted the bulk of the workforce, Registered Nurses and Registered Midwives, a “one off, historical reset” pay rise consisting of 6.8 per cent backdated to July 2025, and 3 per cent in July 2026 and 2027.
On top of an interim pay rise of 3 per cent in July 2025, this totals a 16 per cent pay rise over three years.
The result is well below what the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association (NSWNMA) was aiming for in its “Special Case”—the term used by the union for this case for a much higher wage rise in the IRC.
This “historical” case was supposed to catch up after the NSW government’s brutal regime of wage suppression, which has meant that nurses and midwives have got less than 2.5 per cent per year on average every year from 2011 to 2025, despite the massive surge of post-COVID inflation.
Yet the “reset” will not catch up to CPI and still leaves us poorer than in 2020 in real terms.
Contributing to the widespread dismay amongst nurses and midwives is the fact that we agreed to a lower pay rise in the last negotiations to focus on ratios.
The Special Case was supposed to be our opportunity to catch up on pay.
Three years later, a watered-down version of nurse and midwife-patient ratios, called “safe staffing levels”, has trickled out into a handful of wards and units.
Nurses and midwives have been left with weak ratio provisions that include AINs in the numbers, who are not registered or sufficiently trained. And now the pay we were told to hold out for has not materialised.
What drew the most ire was that the IRC’s commentary agreed that nurses and midwives have been chronically undervalued and underpaid but then refused to order a pay rise to remedy it.
Among the justifications was the sheer size of the nursing and midwifery workforce. The Government cannot afford to pay us because we are too numerous.
In reality though, the current staffing crisis calls for an increase in the numbers of Registered Nurses and Midwives, and therefore an increase in our pay.
Strategy to win
Along with anger towards the NSW Labor Government, nurses and midwives have directed frustration at the union leadership and the “Special Case” strategy.
Branch after branch endorsed the claims of the “Special Case”, for a 35 per cent pay rise, an increase in sick leave to 20 days, and increased night duty penalties.
But at the same time, branches voted to pursue these demands through a legalistic strategy of arbitration in the IRC.
Members were never asked to choose between a legalistic strategy which places our fate in the hands of the IRC or planned, effective, militant industrial action.
A key lesson of this pay campaign for militant members is the need to organise support amongst rank-and-file nurses and midwives in branches across NSW for sustained and disruptive industrial action.
A motion recognising the failure of the Special Case strategy and setting out a sustained and disruptive plan for industrial action was debated and voted on at the Committee of Delegates at the end of April.
While the motion didn’t pass, the number of votes for it reflected a significant level of dissent towards the strategy taken by the NSWNMA.
Industrial action was used in patchy and sporadic ways at best, and was wound down in favour of a legalistic strategy which took power out of nurses’ and midwives’ hands.
Better rank-and-file coordination could see such motions win in the future.
Nurses and midwives across NSW will be meeting to discuss the pay outcome in the coming months, and it is crucial we learn the right lessons from this failure.
The anger and disappointment is not going away, and there is significant appetite among members to turn this outcome into lessons and a strategy to win the pay rise that we deserve.
