Industrial News 2006

November 2006

The fight to retain nursing skills

A brief examination of the media both here and overseas suggests that for most western economies the financial future looks rosy. Profits are up, money is freely available and consumer demand is on the rise globally.

A flood of workers primarily from India and China who are paid miserly wages and the continued deregulation of domestic labour markets has resulted in an unprecedented increase in company profit margins.

In Australia particularly over the last twenty years the prevailing attitude of successive governments has been that industrial and financial deregulation and low debt are the priorities and the keys to strong economic growth and low unemployment.

However within this economic paradise it is broadly accepted that there is now an emerging problem of an entrenched shortage of skilled labour.

The imminent retirement of the baby boomers has seen a grudging acceptance by employers and governments that the skills shortage could present a significant structural weakness in our economy and make it far more difficult to provide basic services within our communities.

In nursing skill shortages are nothing new. Historically there have always been shortages across specific nursing specialties and currently shortages exist across nearly all nursing disciplines. In the past these shortages were viewed as cyclical and could be addressed by specific responses, however there is now general agreement that the current shortage is quantitative and qualitatively different; it is long term and entrenched and has the potential to emerge as the dominant public health issue.

For the majority of employers this will present a real dilemma. They will want the good economic times that provide high profits to keep rolling along. At the same time they will need to employ and pay labour to keep their businesses afloat in the context of skill shortages where labour costs will increase.

In the health and community services sector employers in both the public and private sectors are increasingly responding to this problem by filling nursing vacancies with non nurses.

In recent times we have witnessed the harsh application of this where under the Howard government’s industrial laws Victorian aged care employers simply sacked large numbers of nurses and replaced them with cheaper labour. We can expect to see this happen more frequently with employers seeking to maximise their profits.

Nurses and their representatives are going to have to campaign and fight to ensure that nursing skills continue to be available to provide the levels of nursing services that patients and residents expect and should receive.

Nick Blake
ANF Federal Industrial Officer