As you may or may not be aware, your non-nursing colleagues are currently going through the process of bargaining their Enterprise Agreement. This process has been extremely drawn-out, and their wage increase is 18 months overdue.

Due to Healthscope only offering the bare minimum they need to make the agreement legal and a wage increase that would see wages fall way behind the cost of living, your colleagues have voted to take industrial action.

Your co-workers would appreciate your support and understanding if you could place any frustrations you may have on management for not giving them a reasonable offer. We know it must feel like groundhog day for you, given all you’ve been through last year. We need to make it clear to Healthscope again that putting profit before their patients and staff is not on.

The industrial action started at 7am yesterday (7 December). They will be undertaking the following five bans:

• Stop performing any duties not stated in your position description

• Take all breaks in full and on time

• Distribute information and/or talking to patients, visitors, the public and/or the media about the reasons for industrial action

• Commence wearing campaign material and badges

• Circulate petitions in worksites

As the non-nursing agreement does not cover you, you cannot wear stickers or badges whilst on shift in the hospital or take part in any other bans. However, your colleagues would appreciate your kind words in solidarity as they take action.