NSW: Nurses pay to rise 16 per cent = 2

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NSW: Nurses pay to rise 16 per cent = 2

The NSW Nurses' Association immediately praised the ruling as a win for nurses strugglingto cope with poor working conditions and critical staff shortages in public hospitals.

"This ruling really recognises that there is a problem in the health system," associationgeneral secretary Brett Holmes said outside the commission in Sydney.

But Mr Holmes said today's decision was an interim one, and the association would continueto push for additional pay increases during final submissions to the commission in Februaryand March.

In its ruling, the commission accepted the "difficult and stressful" circumstancesunder which NSW nurses worked.

It said poor comparative pay rates were contributing to the nursing shortage.

"The fact that their pay rates lag behind those of their professional colleagues isadding to the difficulties being experienced and, we consider, is exacerbating the shortagesof nurses in public hospitals," it said.

But the commission warned salary rises were not the whole solution to the nursing crisis.

"... but we consider that they can play an important part in a broader strategy thatwe are told is now being put into place to alleviate the shortage," it said, adding itwould monitor the strategy's effectiveness.

"... its success or otherwise may be an important consideration in assessing claimsfor qualification and retention allowances and in determining whether or not it is appropriateto apply any additional wage increase that might be awarded on work value grounds froma date earlier than 1 July 2004."

The commission was careful to stress that nurses - covered by a Memorandum of Understandingwith the government that also covers other public sector workers - had a special casefor a wage rise.

"As to public sector employees generally, there is no evidence before us of any nexusbetween such employees and nurses that would show that a flow on was justified or, indeed,even likely," it said.

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KEYWORD: NURSES NSW 2 SYDNEY (REOPENS)