WORKERS across hospitals and health departments in NSW will receive a pay bump while nurses and midwives continue to negotiate for better wages and conditions.

More than 50,000 cleaners, scientists, security staff, psychologists, wardspeople and other professionals at public hospitals and health services across the state will receive a four per cent pay rise as part of a new enterprise agreement.

The Health Services Union signed the one-year agreement with the NSW government on Tuesday, with a 3.5 percent real pay rise and 0.5 percent superannuation bump.

Health Minister Ryan Park commended the union on the “collaborative approach” to the deal.

“(We) have agreed to work together to identify system changes, productivity outcomes, benefits from award reform and savings,” he said.

The deal also guarantees 100 percent salary packaging for staff as well as a promise of a once-off $1000 cost-of-living relief payment if Sydney’s CPI increases by more than four percent.

Union secretary Gerard Hayes said the agreement was a major and historic win for members.

“This is a generational advance for 50,000 health workers who have earned every cent of this pay rise,” he said.

“The reform to salary packaging will be life-changing for hard working people on modest incomes.”

But nurses and midwives are still at the negotiating table after the NSW government struck a truce with the nurses union in September following months of wage negotiations and strikes.

Under the agreement, the government committed to an interim three percent pay increase, less than a quarter of the 15 percent the union was demanding.

In the largest rally against the Labor government since coming to power in March 2023, at least 5000 nurses and midwives took to the streets in September over wage negotiations.

The 24-hour stop-work action by nurses and midwives affected 454 elective surgeries and temporarily closed 81 beds, according to NSW Health.

All NSW public sector workers, including nurses, have been offered a three-year, 10.5 percent pay increase factoring in a mandatory rise in superannuation payments.
Negotiations are ongoing.

By Neve BRISSENDEN, AAP