NURSES at two north-west prisons will stage stop-work meetings on Tuesday in the hope of securing better pay and working conditions.
The nurses from the metropolitan remand and Dame Phyllis Frost centres will be joined by colleagues from clinics at eight other Victorian prisons after enterprise bargaining negotiations between the Australian Nursing Federation and GEO Care Australia, the company that manages the prisons’ medical centres, broke down.
About 60 nurses will hold two-hour stop-work meetings and implement bans on administrative duties.
The union said a stalemate had been reached after 18 months of negotiations, with GEO Care unwilling to back-date a pay rise of 2.5 per cent to July 2012, after the current agreement expired.
Nurses last received a pay rise in July 2011.
GEO Group spokesman Ken Davis said the company was offering a rise of 15.4 per cent over four years.
ANF state secretary Lisa Fitzpatrick said entitlements for prison nurses were below those offered to other Victorian nurses.
“The non-payment of annual leave loading and long service leave entitlements of eight weeks at 10 years means their entitlements are significantly lower than nurses in the public or private health system,” she said.
“Working in a prison medical clinic is an extremely challenging job and GEO Care Australia will be unable to maintain a stable nursing workforce if it continues to offer its nurses entitlements way below health industry standards.”
