ANF warns against industry awards

The Australian Nursing Federation (ANF) has collected 6,500 petitions from nurses appealing to the president of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) to maintain occupational nursing awards.

The ANF’s federal secretary, Ged Kearney, said some nurses are concerned that the AIRC may replace nursing awards with generic industry awards, as part of the Federal Government’s award modernisation process.

“Nurses want to work under an occupational award, because nurses contribute to all areas of health care, including working in businesses, aged care, the community and hospitals,” said Ms Kearney.

“Also, importantly, many nurses can be employed in multiple areas, for example; aged care and community care or public and private sectors and they identify strongly with their nursing profession wherever they work.”

The union is particularly concerned that working standards for nurses in aged care would suffer under the move, because their pay conditions lag behind nurses in other health sectors.