Vic: GEO Group Nurses Pay Demands

Nurses in 10 Victorian prisons will take limited strike action from Tuesday, in a pay dispute with the private operator that employs them.

Prison nurses have been negotiating with prisons outsourcing company the GEO Group for 18 months, after their workplace agreement expired last June. About 60 of these nurses have now threatened to take strike action.

Among planned industrial actions are a two-hour stop-work meeting on Tuesday; bans on all filing duties and collection of statistical data; no working in higher duties; no overtime; a ban on receiving some phone calls; and the wearing of campaign T-shirts, badges and stickers.

The bans will apply at 10 prisons, including the Melbourne Assessment Prison in West Melbourne; the Metropolitan Remand Centre and the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre in Ravenhall; Beechworth Correctional Centre; and the Hopkins Correctional Centre in Ararat.The last wage increase nurses in the GEO Group's prisons received was in January 2011.

The union that represents nurses argues that the company is offering a pay increase of just 2.5 per cent a year.

Nursing staff at the prisons have already voted down one offer GEO has made to them.
The strike threat follows what the nurses' union last year termed an "industrial marathon" run by Victoria's nurses, ending last March after nine months of strikes and work bans.

The Australian Nursing Federation argues the GEO Group will be unable to maintain a stable nursing workforce if its current conditions continue, as staff will go to workplaces that have better conditions and are less stressful.

The union's Victorian secretary, Lisa Fitzpatrick, said negotiations had broken down over back pay and the introduction of some entitlements she said were standard for all other Victorian nurses.
"[The entitlements] are way below health industry standard and this is impacting on recruitment and retention," Ms Fitzpatrick said. "Nurses working in our prison system have very low morale ... Working in a prison medical clinic is an extremely challenging job."

She said the GEO Group did not pay health industry standard penalty rates to nurses working on public holidays, as well as not paying some annual leave loading and long-service leave entitlements other nurses received.