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# Hospital doctors strike for wages, safe hours and public health
- URL: https://redflag.org.au/article/hospital-doctors-strike-for-wages-safe-hours-and-public-health/
- Published: 2026-10-08T06:46:30.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-08T06:46:30.000Z
- Author: Mary Ellen Murphy
- Tags: Unions and Workers, Activism and Reports, Victoria

In July, Victorian public hospital doctors voted 97 percent in favour of taking industrial action for the first time in 20 years. The reason is simple: the healthcare system is unsafe for patients and staff.

The Victorian healthcare system is in crisis. Systemic failures at every level compound one another. Limited access to primary care and community services leaves people more unwell and reliant on emergency departments for care. This results in long wait times, overcrowding and unsafe workloads.

Bed shortages, often caused by delays in discharging patients due to the lack of support services, are also an issue. For example, recent data from the Victorian Health Department shows that nineteen of 21 mental health units fail to admit acutely unwell patients from the emergency department within eight hours. This results in staff attempting to care for patients in under-resourced and unsuitable environments in which they are at greater risk of violence. The lack of suitable facilities for mental health patients and adequate staffing also contributes to the ongoing failures to meet goals for the reduction in use of restrictive interventions such as seclusion and restraint.

It is no wonder then that burnout is endemic among public hospital doctors like me working in this broken system. We are expected to be machines and cope with unsafe workloads, under-resourcing and excessive hours without complaint. The system relies on unpaid overtime, guilt and obligation to keep going.

Our industrial claims highlight the punishing hours and minimal protections Victorian doctors currently face. They include a pay rise in line with what the nurses won in 2024, better guarantees of overtime for all non-rostered hours worked, permanent employment as a default model (instead of many thousands of “junior” hospital doctors, many with over a decade of experience, being given only yearly contracts), maximum shift lengths of 12.5 hours (rather than the 14 hours commonly worked at the moment), at least four rostered days off per fortnight including two consecutive days, a maximum of four consecutive night shifts, minimum doctor-to-patient ratios for safe care and mandatory 30-minute paid rest breaks every five hours.

During the fourteen months of unsuccessful bargaining discussions, the Victorian Hospitals Industrial Association (the association of employers in the public health industry) backpedalled on its previous agreement to simplify overtime payments, arguing it would cost too much to pay doctors the hours they actually work.

It is not only at work that public hospital employees are coming under attack. Over the last few months, we have seen our regulator, AHPRA, conflate antisemitism with anti-Zionism to silence healthcare workers speaking up about Palestine, including outside of work and on social media. This violates democratic rights and sets a terrible precedent for other professions. Many healthcare workers feel particularly obliged to advocate for Palestinians based on our roles as health workers. We suffer moral injury when we are prevented from speaking out about the atrocities committed against our colleagues in Gaza and against the Palestinian people as a whole.

When confronted about the lack of a public response to this attack on our freedom of speech, the Victorian branch of the Australian Medical Association admitted it was scared to address it publicly for fear of backlash, and that the federal organisation was engaged in back-room discussions with AHPRA. This approach aligns more with a lobby organisation than a trade union.

A union’s strength comes from its members’ involvement and activity. This also protects unions when they want to speak out about political issues important to their members. There is a reason that the Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation (the part of the Australian Medical Association that is engaged in bargaining) in New South Wales—the branch involved most recently in prolonged industrial action with an active rank and file—was the only branch of our union that put out a statement condemning the AHPRA adoption of the pro-Israel International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism.

Turning to the current campaign for a better agreement in Victoria, we have so far had multiple four-hour stop-works across different sites and services on different days. At these rallies, workers were asked to vote on whether they supported a statewide strike on 14 September. The response was almost unanimous—doctors voted for a statewide strike.

Despite this, on 14 September, thousands of other public hospital doctors went to work with even less enthusiasm than usual. Our statewide strike did not go ahead after a legal challenge about patient safety by the state government led our union to withdraw the notice. It seems that the state government cares about patient safety only when it comes to preventing doctors from taking industrial action, not when hospitals are chronically understaffed and overstretched day in and day out.

Under sustained pressure from the membership, a four-hour statewide stop work took place on 1 October and hundreds of doctors rallied outside state parliament. Our union leaders called a meeting the previous evening and suggested there could be an offer and that we should consider cancelling the rally. The membership made it clear that we would not back down again and that we are tired of tactics aimed at impeding industrial action.

We are now being told that we have run out of time prior to the government entering caretaker mode to secure a four-year agreement and have been presented with a one-year interim offer, our first offer in fourteen months. This is very convenient for the state government, as it would prevent us from taking action in the lead-up to the election. The situation is developing, but I will vote “No” and support the demand for a twelve-hour statewide strike.

There has been little indication that the union leaders are considering another statewide strike. This is despite the members giving a clear mandate for one. It can be done. Other healthcare unions have pulled it off before. This is where solidarity between workers is essential, and we need to talk to other unions about how they organise to stand up in Fair Work rather than tossing the idea of a statewide strike into the too-hard basket. After all, our fight is relevant to other healthcare workers. If we can achieve significant gains and improve the system that we all work in, everyone will benefit. If we get a significant pay increase, then other workers are better positioned to demand the same.

Hospitals are massive workplaces with real industrial power. We need to rebuild a socialist current within healthcare to revive rank-and-file trade unionism and overcome sectionalism with real solidarity. Together, we can win the system we deserve.