In an unprecedented turn of events, Victorian nurses and midwives voted down in May a pay offer the union leadership had agreed to in-principle with the Allan government. Branch secretary Lisa Fitzpatrick told reporters at the time that members had never before rejected an in-principle agreement during her twenty-three-year leadership tenure.

Just over a month later, a statewide members’ meeting of over two thousand nurses and midwives endorsed a new, improved offer. As a union member working in the public sector, I have had the opportunity to participate in, to discuss, and to debate the ebbs and flows of this campaign with my colleagues. An honest and frank discussion — of not only the outcome of this campaign, but of how it was achieved — is a valuable endeavour for any union member who truly believes the oft-repeated maxim “we are the union”: that to effectively leverage the collective power that lies at the heart of trade unionism, our membership must be empowered through democratic structures that encourage our participation in union activity, and our engagement in decision-making.

The context

The 2024-28 enterprise bargaining agreement campaign came at a time when the value of our work could not be clearer. Over the course of the last agreement, ANMF members have worked through a pandemic, bushfires, floods, and significant staffing pressures to deliver vital care to our community. The recognition of the fundamental relationship between our work and community wellbeing, in the context of an exhausted workforce facing the pressures of the rising cost of living, set the stage for a bold wages claim.

However, this campaign also came at a time of declining membership activity within the branch. Our union last negotiated pay rises for Victorian public sector nurses and midwives in 2016, and even then, the ANMF noted that this was “the first EBA in more than 20 years that did not involve ANMF members taking industrial action.” The union is almost 100,000 members strong, yet there is an entire generation of public sector nurses and midwives who have never before participated in industrial action. Increasingly, members are signed up to the union not on the basis of our collective strength, but with the promise of professional indemnity insurance, accommodation deals, and individual member assistance.

There is very little democratic structure within the ANMF, and even where this formal structure does exist, it has atrophied over time. Our delegates, known as Job Reps, are nominated rather than elected, and do not serve fixed terms. There is no local sub-branch structure, and where workplace members’ meetings are called, they are not general meetings but specifically issue-based. Members are typically invited to raise concerns as individuals, via their Job Rep or via the member assistance line, or where those issues relate to the membership as a whole, by emailing the branch secretary directly.

Without a workplace branch structure, the annual delegates’ conferences represent the only opportunity for the broader membership to move motions that will shape the direction of the union. Members wishing to advocate around controversial issues in-between conferences are typically told that the union cannot take a position until these issues are decided upon at the conference. No avenue therefore exists for the union to democratically respond to urgent issues.

Of more concern in the context of an EBA campaign, the log of claims negotiated with government is constructed around the resolutions endorsed by the previous annual delegates’ conferences. In the absence of regular, local members meetings, Job Reps move motions that have not been voted on in any formal structure within their workplaces. They must then vote as workplace representatives at the conference on other motions, but without any requirement — and often without the opportunity — to consult the colleagues that they formally represent. Therefore Job Reps are put into the difficult position of voting on behalf of members whose opinions they cannot know. Conversely— in the absence of fixed terms or any other formal mechanism of accountability — the broader membership has no recourse to challenge a Job Rep who does not accurately represent them (other than to also nominate as a Job Rep, to attend conference alongside them, and to be similarly unaccountable to other members). The broader membership, whose engagement is fundamental to the union’s collective strength, is therefore almost entirely divorced from one of the union’s most fundamental decision-making processes.

The other key formal democratic process within our union is the election of the statewide Branch Council, the union’s highest policy and decision-making body. The most recent election, the 2023 election of Branch Councillors and Executive Committee members, is an obvious indictment on the health of our union’s internal democracy. The four Executive Committee member positions were elected entirely unopposed. The fourteen successfully elected councillors all belonged to the slate of Branch President Maree Burgess, who was first elected to the branch presidency in 2010. Only one other, individual candidate contested their election, and only 17.18  per cent of the total membership voted. It is difficult to imagine any healthy and representative democratic process, on behalf of almost 100,000 members, eliciting so little participation.

An entrenched leadership and a lack of membership activity breeds a context in which “the union” is understood not as its members but as its officials — a distinct and separate body that sits above the membership. Union leaders see their role in the EBA as expert negotiators whose value resides in personal characteristics, relationships with politicians, and years of experience in back-room negotiations. In this view, EBAs are won through clever legal strategy, sensible demands, political persuasion and compromise. Neither the leaders, nor the members themselves, see the membership as the drivers of the campaign. Members’ participation is limited to mass meetings, their strength to a show-of-numbers in support of their leaders. Even if the leadership did wish to run a confrontational campaign, their ability to accurately gauge the mood and capacity of the membership is severely constrained.

The campaign

We could characterise the initial stages of the 2024-28 EBA campaign as a series of impressive set-pieces, deployed in the service of a meticulously planned strategy. Following the commencement of negotiations, the ANMF called a statewide members meeting on the 21st March to consider the Allan government’s initial offer. It went like this. The offer is explained by the union leadership, who make it clear that they do not endorse it, and questions are taken from the floor. Some members seek clarity about the specifics of the offer, some express the view that the pay increase on the table is insulting. The offer is resoundingly rejected by the members who are present. The media are called into the meeting to film the unanimous, jubilant vote.

Negotiations recommence and a protected industrial action ballot is filed. The unanimously rejected offer is in line with the government’s wages policy, which dictates that public sector employees’ wages and conditions are funded at no greater than 3 per cent per annum, with the additional possibility of a separate lump sum cash payment equivalent to 0.5 per cent of the overall agreement costs. The union presents its claim to members in terms of “cost” and “non-cost” items, with mainly items from the “cost” category yet to be agreed upon. During the meeting, an online poll of the members gathered directs the leadership to prioritise “wages and allowances” in the ongoing negotiations.

Another mass members’ meeting is called on the 30^th of April to share the results of the protected industrial action ballot with members. We hear that 50,000 members at 106 employers are encouraged to vote “yes”. Members at 105 employers are successful — meaning that at each employer, over 50 per cent of members voted, and over 50 per cent of those who voted, voted “yes”. This is an encouraging show of engagement, and means members at 105 employers can take legally protected industrial action. We hear that members’ meetings at worksites will take place for the first time in the campaign to direct the implementation of stage one industrial action. This stage — which includes the wearing of union t-shirts at work, the decoration of wards with campaign material, and patient and media outreach — is scheduled to begin on the 7th of May. Stage two industrial action, which includes the closure of 1 in 4 beds, the cancellation of 1 in 4 elective surgeries and the ability to conduct stop-work meetings, is set to commence on the 17^th of May. The media is again called in to film members, as they unanimously vote in favour of commencing industrial action.

Where I work, wearing union t-shirts and decorating the wards built a sense of confidence and belonging. It was easy to identify other active union members, and I was especially touched to see other health professionals — including our colleagues in pharmacy and allied health — donning stickers expressing their support for our campaign.

At 7 am on the 17^th of May, stage-two industrial action began. By 2:10 pm, members were directed to return to stage one, because an in-principle agreement with government had already been reached. Oncology, paediatric and dialysis wards were excluded from bed closures — which includes the wards where I work — but a fellow union member at the Royal Melbourne Hospital told me that, at her workplace, hundreds of beds were closed in this time and a Code Yellow (internal emergency) issued.

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This is serious, well-organised and disruptive industrial action — the first of its kind in our union since the 2011-12 EBA campaign — and is significant not only in terms of its effect, but for the widespread rank and file member activity that is required to implement it. It is also significant for the political arguments that justify it. Nurses and midwives are reluctant to implement any industrial action that will disrupt the care of our patients, but we also understand the relationship between our working conditions and community healthcare conditions, and the necessity of our work. Closing beds is only possible when members believe that this is the mechanism through which we will secure the care our patients deserve in the future. Given this significance, it is unsurprising that many members expressed disbelief that we would call off stage two after just seven hours.

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The ANMF informed members that the content of the proposed settlement would remain confidential until the statewide meeting called for the 20th of May. This was expected to function in a similar manner to the first: members would hear the detail of the offer, ask questions, and vote. A successful vote begins the process of a formal ballot of all employees; an unsuccessful one directs the union leadership to return to negotiations. Given their endorsement of the offer, and the decision to invite the media to attend the vote at the conclusion of the meeting, we can only assume that the leadership expected a similar, if not unanimous, outcome.

The meeting begins with the outlining of the impressive breadth of claims secured in the agreement. We learn for example that the qualifying period for paid parental leave will reduce from the current six months to zero; that leave provision for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nurses and midwives will expand to accommodate Sorry Business; and of a new provision of twenty days’ paid leave for gender affirmation procedures. The entire room applauds a new clause that the Alfred’s hyperbaric nurses will be paid a new allowance of $85.08 for each shift where they undertake or are on-call to undertake a dive. We learn that there will be a 50 per cent qualifications allowance uplift in 2027 for those members with postgraduate qualifications, and that the RUSON/M (a nursing/midwifery assistant role for undergraduate students) rate of pay will increase from 75 per cent to 85.1 per cent of the graduate rate. We hear that the union has introduced a climate change clause featuring a commitment from employers to “continuous improvement including at a local workplace level to integrate environmental considerations into decision making.” We learn that there are provisions intended to address casualisation, such as redeployment allowances and an increase to night shift allowance for non-casual employees of between and $20.62 and $35.46, depending on the day of the week, intended to make night shift more attractive to staff and minimise the expensive practice of shift backfill through private agencies. The many, detailed clauses are moved through at pace, to an overwhelmingly positive reception.

It is only when the conversation moves to the percentage wage increase that the mood becomes less jubilant. Throughout the course of campaigning, the ANMF leadership has repeatedly framed its wages claim to members as “wages in whatever form,” or “putting money in your pocket in different ways.” They outline this proposed mechanism at the meeting: cash payments, increases and new allowances, five-percentage wage increases, and the award wage case. The wage increase as it relates to the award wage case, which members are told is very complex, is only explained in the briefest terms at the end of the entire presentation, with the preamble that we do not need to understand it. We are told that we are awaiting a Fair Work Commission (FWC) decision on what the percentage would be and its timing, and a Government agreement as to the retention of relativities. We hear arguments that the cash bonus represents between a 4.5–9 per cent equivalent payment, subject to a member’s classification and EFT, and then there is a 3 per cent per annum increase, and another 1 per cent in good faith in anticipation of “the Fair Work guaranteed outcome between 5.5 per cent and 13.3 per cent during the life of the agreement.”

We are not given the opportunity to consider the considerable complexity in the wages offer. A member asks why we were not provided with the detail of the offer before the meeting, given its complexity, and is told that there was not enough time and that it needed to be kept confidential from the media and other unions. Several members raise issue with the cash payment, given that it will be calculated pro-rata for part-time employees (nurses typically work 0.8 EFT), will be taxed highly and will not be incorporated into the base rate for subsequent percentage increases. Another member asks why we suspended stage-2 industrial action so quickly, given that parts of the offer remain unclear and this would be our leverage to achieve more. The tone of the meeting becomes more oppositional, while the leadership continue to argue that we must comply with government wages policy, asking us repeatedly why we cannot understand the other ways that our pay will increase. Question time ends with the argument from the floor that we have a responsibility to break with wages policy on behalf of other public sector workers, including paramedics, teachers, and our colleagues in public mental health. When the NSW branch of the ANMF’s 15 per cent pay claim is mentioned, we are told by the leadership not to believe everything that we read.

By now the meeting is both oppositional and chaotic. Regional members are already leaving on buses at the time a vote is called. There is an initial split vote on whether we should vote, then another vote on the agreement. It is split roughly evenly and not counted, and the leadership announce the offer has been rejected. It is obvious that the rejection of the offer comes as a great shock to the union leadership that had recommended it. After the meeting, our secretary tells the press that “despite our best attempts at explaining it for a very long time, our members haven’t been able to grasp the concept of the aged care wages case” — comments for which she later apologised.

Given the limited opportunities for democratic process in our union, the ones we do get deserve our respect. These mass meetings represented a rare opportunity for the broader membership to discuss the direction of the EBA campaign. Union members are not required to blindly defer to officials, but should be encouraged to participate in debate, raise legitimate concerns, and make informed decisions about any offer. Instead, members entered a mass meeting — which our officials were fully aware is a dynamic and emotional forum — completely blind to this complex offer. During question time, several members even remarked that they felt they were being blindfolded as to its real content. Members were deprived of their right to decide on the offer not because they weren’t capable of grasping the details of the award case, but because the leadership was confident they did not need to adequately explain the in-principle agreement to us to get it voted up.

Following the shock rejection, the ANMF sent out the detail of the offer to members and called a series of members meetings to explain what was now being referred to as a 18 to 23 per cent pay increase. Breaking down the information provided, the offer is:

• Year One: 3 per cent + 1 per cent + $6100 (for full time, pro-rata for part time)
• Year Two: 3 per cent + $1000 (non-casual only)
• Year Three: 3 per cent
• Year Four: 3 per cent
• At some point: the award wage will increase via the FWC aged care work value case ruling. This will mean a 4.5 to 12 per cent increase to the lowest pay classifications (i.e. they will be adjusted to not be worse off than the minimum wage) and at a later date, “the EBA relativities will be determined by FWC in accordance with principles agreed with VHIA [Victorian Hospitals’ Industrial Association]” (ie it is unclear how much higher classifications will increase by).

Given that EBAs must pay above the award (minimum) wage, and that this FWC case is intended to adjust the award wage to redress a historical systemic undervaluation of “women’s work”, it would not be unreasonable for members to make a separate assessment about what represents a fair EBA wage increase. Nonetheless, in the workplace members’ meetings that I attended following the rejection of the in-principle agreement, the award wage increase is folded into the EBA deal percentage increase figures. The union officials emphasise that the key argument relating to the FWC case is to secure a mechanism through which the award wage adjustment — which will automatically raise the lowest rates — also flows on to higher classifications, and therefore does not collapse our pay structure. A union industrial officer then argues that we cannot break with government wages policy, because this would mean the government would need to pay other public sector workers more, and our union’s job is only to put money into our pockets. Another member asks why we will not be restarting stage-two industrial action as leverage in negotiations, and is told that if we do so, the FWC will issue an injunction and the action will become unprotected, and that this means we could lose our jobs and pay. The union official fails to mention that should the FWC issue an injunction, members would have an opportunity to cease industrial action and comply.

Stage-one industrial action continues and notification to recommence stage two is never filed. Many members express their disappointment in how the mass meeting was handled and the way the claim was presented to the membership, but are pleased to have now been given more detail on the offer via the members’ meetings. On the 22^nd of June, a new statewide mass meeting is called to consider a new, in-principle agreement.

This time, members are given some detail of the offer before the meeting. We are told that the offer is “a 28.4 per cent (compounded) wage increase by the end of the fourth year of the agreement.” It will provide “certainty and timing regarding each wage increase for employees of all classifications across the life of the agreement,” and retain “the improved and new allowances and penalties and improved terms and conditions previously negotiated.” We are told that the offer does not include cash bonuses, because “in response to member feedback this money has been included in the wage increases and contributes to the overall 28.4 per cent wage increase and other improvements.”

Understanding this offer first requires us to understand what is meant by compounded. In the presentation outlining the offer, compounding was explained by demonstrating that if you took a $100 base rate, and apply a 5 per cent per annum increase, then:

• 5 per cent in year one = $105
• 5 per cent in year two = $110.25
• 5 per cent in year three = $115.76
• 5 per cent in year four = $121.55

The union argues that this means — in this example — a 5 per cent increase each year over four years is not a 20 per cent pay increase, but 21.55 per cent (compounded). This is not how percentage increases in EBA agreements are typically described, nor is it how the initial pay offers were put to the membership. If we consider the Registered Nurse classifications structure without the compounding, then the percentage increase for a graduate nurse over the life of the agreement is 26.51 per cent, with the other classifications similarly sitting around the 26 per cent mark.

In a significant improvement on the previous offer, the union leadership announce they secured the “top end” of the projected FWC award wage ruling, ie a concrete 13 per cent, rather than a possible 5.5 to 13 per cent. It is still possible to argue that an agreement to apply even the highest of the foreshadowed, possible award wage increases — and to have that increase flow on to higher classification so as to not collapse the pay structure — should not be included in our understanding of the EBA’s percentage increase. However, it is also true that the certainty enshrined in the new offer, which pre-empts the FWC ruling, is a marked improvement on the previous offer and represents a win.

Even when we do extract the entire 13 per cent foreshadowed award wage increase, and set aside the compounded calculation, the graduate nurse rate will still see an improvement of 13.51 per cent over the life of the agreement. This is an actual percentage increase, not the result of a calculation that incorporates a cash bonus. This is greater than wages policy. Given the union leadership’s reticence to commit to breaking with this policy, it also represents a significant advance on the previous offer in a political sense. Furthermore, these improvements did not come at the cost of the previously agreed-upon clauses, but were won in addition to them.

In terms of process, the union leadership did provide some — if not all — of the offer detail before the mass meeting. Question time was limited to a strict “one question only, no preamble,” but unlike in the previous mass meeting — members were also given the opportunity to speak for and against the resolution to accept the offer prior to voting. This represents a small, but nonetheless important, acknowledgement from our union leadership that democratic processes must be followed.

The lessons

If you don’t fight, you lose. Despite our leadership’s resounding endorsement of the second offer, and the frequent assertions from both officials and some members that we would not get a better deal, we did. We can and should recognise the efforts of the ANMF leadership in negotiating this deal, and be grateful for the incredible wealth of technical knowledge that they have amassed and painstakingly poured into this agreement. But it is also true that, had the membership not rejected their recommended offer, we would not have the wages certainty that we have now, nor would we have been able to break through the government’s wages policy. In spite of arguments that we could not — or even should not — do so, members can be proud that in rejecting the recommended offer, we have raised the ceiling of possibility for other public sector workers’ EBA campaigns.

Whether you attribute the failure of the initial offer to a fair assessment of its content, to the union leadership’s unwillingness or inability to explain the deal, or to the refusal of a section of our membership to give up our democratic right to make our own informed decisions — it is clear that in all three of these domains, the new offer, and the way it was presented to us, mark at least a small step forward.

Nurses and midwives do difficult, skilled, and socially necessary work every day. Although our leadership was at pains to stress that any greater improvements to pay increases would be “too expensive” and that it was important to keep our claim within the supposed limits of budget funding, from a different perspective, our union represents one of the few mechanisms available to working people to actually force the government’s hand to invest in healthcare. The proud history of our union shows that it is through industrial action that we have secured the career structure and nurse-patient ratios that have challenged sexist beliefs about both nursing and unionism, and elevated both our profession and the care that we are able to provide to our community. In the course of this EBA dispute, we campaigned for 51 days, but undertook disruptive industrial action for just seven hours. Yet even in this short time, the membership demonstrated its strength and willingness to fight for more.

The key lesson of this campaign has been that greater democracy must lie at the heart of any union campaign that dares to strive for more. Even within the current structure, it was the engagement of members in the few avenues available to them that made a better deal possible. The more engaged and active members are in the union, the stronger, more dynamic and better representative our union becomes. An entrenched, disengaged leadership cannot effectively gauge nor respond to the mood and demands of the membership, even if it hoped or needed to.

The rejection of the in-principle agreement may have shocked the leadership, but it is essential that members do not understand leaders’ disconnect from us as an aberration, or an error in communication — but rather as the direct product of their vision of unionism. The prioritisation of media narratives and “confidentiality” over members’ right to make an informed decision, speaks to a union model that sees its power in our leaders and their clever negotiation strategy. In such a view, members threatened the very foundation of the union’s power when we challenged the deal, and this goes some way to explain the disrespect shown for both the democratic process and the membership itself. But in rejecting the offer, and paving the way for what was a better deal, we have offered an alternative vision of where our power lies: in an empowered and active membership.

If “we are the union” is to be more than an empty platitude, then our union requires the democratic structure that facilitates our participation in activity and decision-making. A workplace sub-branch structure, in which regular and general workplace meetings open to all members take place, is one such mechanism. It facilitates the regular election of delegates, regular communication between those delegates and the members they represent, and the possibility to endorse motions at a local level. Delegates can take their members’ motions to regional or statewide meetings, and take motions from other workplaces back to their colleagues. This structure holds the potential to solve collective issues at a workplace level, or for members to raise and build support for issues on a broader basis in-between delegates’ conferences, and for delegates’ conferences. It is within such a structure that NSW branch members have had success in matters as specific as winning toasters back in their break rooms, to those as broad as debating and building support for the 15 per cent pay increase that leads their log of claims. In the process of building those structures, we build the possibility that the very members whose wages and conditions rest on the outcome of an EBA campaign, will be trusted to make the decisions about what we fight for, how we fight, and what we are willing to risk — and to build the capacity and appetite to take the industrial action that will be necessary to win.

Following the endorsement of the final offer, Jacinta Allan may have tweeted that “We just gave Victoria’s hardworking nurses and midwives a 28.4 per cent pay rise,” but we can be certain that these politicians, and our union officials, know that this was not an offer that was freely given. It is our task as members to make sure that the lessons of this campaign are not forgotten. We can and should celebrate the victories that we have won today, but we must also build towards the pay and conditions in healthcare that we deserve now, and into the future. It is as true now as it was in 1986: dedication doesn’t pay the rent.

Poster and photograph by the author