In short:
About 50,000 nurses and midwives have walked off the job across NSW.
The NSW Nurses and Midwives Association have been in an ongoing pay dispute with the government, brought to a head this week after police were offered a historic 39 per cent increase.
What’s next?
The NSW government is considering arbitration in the Industrial Relations Commission.
Police offered 39% but the much more over-worked and under-paid nurses aren’t even going to be given 15%? What an absolute fucking farce.
It is quite odd. Also odd that they would agree to so much while still negotiating on so many other fronts. Would have made more sense for government to agree to all at the same time, benchmarked against each other.
Massive difference in education/qualification between average police and nurses. You need a high school certificate to become a cop and at minimum a diploma for enrolled nurse or an undergraduate degree to start on a career as an RN and with specialization the skies the limit. All that time and expense studying while a police officer can be earning good money.
Pay for nurses and to some extent teachers has a basis in historical sexism. Even as these occupations became increasingly professional and demanded much higher levels of education they retained the stigma of being womens jobs. Its a joke and completely without justification.
Someone in /r/australia noticed that contradiction too:
Mr Park said it would be impossible to “essentially erode the gap in wages in a single year” because it would cost the state several hundred million dollars.
…
Their frustrations were heightened when on Monday NSW Police officers were offered an historic pay increase of up to 39 per cent over the next four years, at a cost of almost $700 million.
…
Unfortunately had an injury and couldn’t walk along with them. Good on them for having the guts and solidarity to walk out together.
