Union woes in spotlight at IRC

MARK Olson knows how to push people’s buttons.

In one of his more famous acts while state secretary of the Australian Nursing Federation, Mr Olson, at the time pursuing a 20 per cent pay increase for members over three years, crashed former premier Colin Barnett’s press conferences with nurses in tow, dressed as bees.

This was ahead of the 2013 election when the state ran a surplus, in part propped up by iron ore prices north of $US140 per tonne.

Ultimately, the threat of industrial action forced the government to act, and just weeks out from the election it committed to a lesser but nevertheless sizable three-year salary increase of 14 per cent. That move may have paid dividends for Mr Barnett.

He was soundly re-elected. Similarly, Mr Olson won his subsequent re-election bid by a whopping two-to-one margin.

That no such détente has been reached between the ANF and the current Labor state government, which has already pushed through administrative pay bumps for nurses of between 3 per cent and 4.5 per cent, is at face value surprising.

But the ANF is not like most other unions. It joins those covering the state’s teachers, police and prison officers in taking a non-affiliated position with WA Labor.

In practical terms this means it’s without political impetus to avoid protracted or painful industrial disputes, as evidenced by the union’s decision in November to lead thousands of nurses to walk off the job in defiance of orders from the Western Australian Industrial Relations Commission.

The consequences of that action are currently being considered by the commission.

Janet Reah, who succeeded Mr Olson as secretary last year, is likely to pay a personal fine of $10,000, with 3,590 other breaches levelled against union members also carrying penalties of $10,000 each, or a total of $35.9 million.

At the time of publication, the union had agreed with the registrar to a lesser fine of $350,000.

Whether it ends up paying that amount remains to be seen, as the full bench has yet to decide on the penalty. Regardless, the episode serves to highlight a difficult chapter in the ANF’s existence.

From an outsider’s perspective, the mess appears to owe itself partly to confusion over whether Mr Olson or Ms Reah was leading negotiations for the union.

Mr Olson, who was first elected secretary in 1998 and won five subsequent bids for the job, had signalled he would not recontest his position in May last year, instead transitioning into the newly created role of union chief executive.

That job was ostensibly meant to give Mr Olson a role in aiding the ANF’s negotiations with the state government over a new pay agreement.

At the time of his resignation, he seemed to indicate the union would put a greater premium on seeking nurse-to-patient ratios rather than large pay increases.

That would likely have served the state government’s interests, given it had instituted a $1,000 cap on public sector wage increases after the 2017 election.

Unions, predictably, were unhappy with this arrangement.

While it was grudgingly supported by unions after Labor was elected, the impact of lower real wages had begun to grate as the state budget gradually returned to surplus.

Attempts to lift the cap – first to increases of 2.5 per cent with $1,000 payment and then to 3 per cent with a $2,500 cost of living payment – proved contentious but ultimately amenable to most unions, with the politically powerful United Workers Union initially expressing misgivings with the offer before ultimately accepting it.

Others, including the politically unaligned ANF, seemed far less impressed. Initially, the union’s position was for salary increases of 5 per cent per annum over two years.

Within days of Ms Reah’s election as secretary, however, members lifted their demand to 10 per cent per annum with a $4,500 cost-of-living payment on top.

Ms Reah had just come out the other end of a bruising election to succeed Mr Olson, narrowly eking out a win by 0.27 per cent, a margin of 56 votes.

And while there’s no suggestion that race was linked to the union’s new demands, the premier and health minister had regularly referenced internal politicking at the ANF when speaking in public, casting doubt over its sincerity.

By this point the union’s demands had become entrenched.

At least one attempt by the government to head off industrial action by committing to nurse-to-patient ratios ultimately failed as Mr Olson declared it didn’t “pass the pub test”.

Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson began appearing particularly incensed with how negotiations played out, repeatedly claiming the union had been disingenuous in agitating for industrial action at the same time.

Pay increases, it seemed, were not open for negotiation.

What followed was a bizarre series of events that cast significant doubt over the ANF’s actual position.

It started when Ms Reah seemed to admit the union would have to accept the government’s pay offer to achieve other workplace benefits, adding the union would be “willing to move” on the subject.

Her words proved fatal to the union’s cause with the premier latching on to the admission, arguing the union didn’t “know when [it had] won”.

Mr Olson was irate. In a tense media appearance the next day, the former secretary became animated, at one stage reprimanding a reporter who suggested Ms Reah had admitted the union would capitulate to the government’s pay offer.

“Don’t even suggest to me that 3 per cent is a decent wages offer,” he said.

“I was there. What she said was if the government comes to the party on a range of matters, the nurses will look at what the range of those matters are.”

The damage was done, though, and five days later the union accepted the 3 per cent offer.

“We’d pushed as hard as we could,” Mr Olson said at the time.

“I am confident that when the new deal goes to our members they will say yes.”

They didn’t.

Mr Olson faced significant backlash once the offer was put to members, and his position as the union’s public face for the negotiations ended, with Ms Reah taking the reins later that month.

Fronting the industrial relations commission on November 23, Ms Reah appeared aggrieved, speaking to media outside for fewer than two minutes and taking just one question.

She vowed to defy the commission’s orders, pushing ahead with strike action and leading a rally on the steps of parliament just two days later.

Despite the heft of the event, which drew thousands of nurses and midwives, neither the premier nor health minister addressed it.

By that point their interest in the matter and patience for it seemed to have worn thin.

Ms Reah later appeared to calm tensions in December, telling media in a far more restrained address at the union’s Northbridge headquarters that it would not again pursue industrial action against the commission’s rulings.

She was, however, sanguine about the chances of the union being deregistered, admitting she was prepared for the worst scenario.

Tensions now seem to have cooled between the ANF and the state government.