Consider this for a moment. Western Australian MPs have been given a 4.5% pay rise, by the Salaries and Allowances Tribunal,giving backbenchers an increase of $5000 to $123,780 and the Premier an increase of $12000 to $287,170 a year.
Western Australian Nurses are negotiating their EBA "Enterprise Bargain Agreement. I use the word negotiate because I honestly do not know what nurses have got to negotiate with?
If W.A nurses on $56000 (L1 Y9) were to gain an annual increase to their wages of $5000, they would need an percentage increase of 10%, and if nurse gained a $12000 increase to their wages, an increase of 22% would be required.
The state government has offered nurses a 12.5% EBA over 3 years. Giving nurses an annual increase of $2352, if nurse were to equate this offer and apply it to a backbenchers salary on a percentage basis, the back bencher would have received an increase of 1.9% and the premier's pay packet would have been boosted by only .8% to gain respective increase under $2500 as is being offered to nurses.
The cost of living is the same to nurses as it is to the government, so if the Labor government believes this is a fair offer, all future decisions made by the state and salaries and Allowances Tribunal should be based on the value of pay offers made by the goverment to the essential services of that State, 4.5% is a huge increase for the government when you consider what is being offered to Nurses.
To all nurses out there, your EBA's is how the goverment and private health controls your wages, maintaining your wages as low as possible. We need to negotiate outside of our EBA's if we are ever going to recieve a professional wage for our profession.
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