Today, we are officially ONE YEAR OUT from the NSW State Election. Here’s what you need to know.
Last state election brought an end to over a decade of Liberal and National Party reign in NSW. During those twelve years, union members battled repeated threats to public services, workplace conditions, and the disgraceful capping of essential worker wages below the cost of living.
The last three years have not been easy, but union members have been able to achieve huge wins for working people in NSW. We have begun rebuilding our essential services, securing stronger workplace protections, and protecting our public services from the relentless privatisation we saw under the previous government.
Here’s a look back on what’s changed since the Liberal Government was voted out in NSW.
Rebuilding Essential Services
Wages and conditions:
Union members successfully fought to abolish the unfair public sector wages cap which was devastating our public services. Now our essential workers have meaningful bargaining power to secure the wages and conditions that will restore our public services, such as:
- Public school teacher vacancies are now at a 12 year low after teachers received their largest pay rise in decades.
- Safe nurse staffing ratios have begun to be rolled out across our health system to ensure there are adequate staffing levels at all times, protecting both nurses and their patients. Nurses are also now running a historic pay case to resolve the wage issue that has driven members of our nursing workforce to relocate interstate.
- Better conditions for a range of NSW Health staff including hospital cleaners, allied health workers, scientists, security officers and patient transport officers who received an 8.5% wage increase over two years.
- Workers across Sydney trains secured greater job security, safety modifications for intercity trains, and a historic 12% pay rise over three years.
- Social workers won greater job security with many funding agreements extended to five years instead of one, as well as portable leave entitlements.
- School support staff were able to replace their exploitative, outsourced contracts with secure employment.
Stronger Rights, Safer Workplaces
Union members campaigned successfully for world-leading Work Health and Safety reform, with NSW now setting a national standard for workplace conditions.
- New laws were passed to deliver tougher sentences to negligent employers guilty of industrial manslaughter – who can now face jail time and multi-million-dollar fines if their gross negligence causes a worker’s death.
- Employers are now held directly responsible for creating unsafe workplaces through the use of harmful digital systems such as AI, algorithms, and digital surveillance.
- New protections won to ensure safer workplaces, including the banning of engineered stone, an expansion of cancer compensation coverage for firefighters, and world-leading enforceable minimum standards for gig workers.
- New powers established to resolve workplace bullying and harassment, including expanded rights for workers to prosecute bullying and harassment as a WHS violation.
Preventing the privatisation of public services
The NSW union movement has won landmark victories for critical public services after a decade of escalating privatisation schemes by the Liberal government.
- The NSW Liberals’ plan to privatise Sydney and Hunter Water was defeated, and protection against its privatisation has been written into the state’s constitution.
- The Northern Beaches’ hospital was returned to public hands after the Liberals’ disastrous privatisation experiment failed the community and led to the unnecessary deaths of patients.
- Public Private Partnerships for hospitals have now been banned, ensuring that public healthcare in NSW is protected from private profit interests.
- Privately contracted school cleaners will now be employed directly by the NSW Government, ending 30 years of exploitative outsourcing.
- With a year to go before the next election, union members across the state need to build on these wins.
We will continue to campaign against the relentless attacks from the NSW Liberal Party, the Nationals, and One Nation on workers’ wages and conditions.
We need activists from across the state willing to stand up for policies that put workers first – including better wages, safe conditions, and strong protections for the essential public services that keep NSW running.
Join the fight alongside thousands of other union members and supporters to protect these gains and shape what comes next.