Nurses have been urged to reconsider plans to hold a second mass strike and instead take an interim offer that would give workers back-pay while officials push for a bigger raise.
Members of the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association plan to stage a 24-hour strike from 7am on Tuesday in the union's second major stop-work action since Labor came to power in March 2023.
The union wants an immediate 15 per cent pay rise, increases to night-shift penalty rates and better conditions, commissioning expert evidence to find productivity and efficiency improvements to justify the deal.
But Health Minister Ryan Park said the union's justification for the pay rise did not stack up.
"It simply did not return the savings that they estimated ... they made some assumptions that were simply not right," he said.
Industrial Relations Commission president Ingmar Taylor has not yet examined the union's argument for pay rises, but he recommended an interim deal with the postponement of industrial action for "intensive discussions" in the next four weeks.
"It would be appropriate for the hard-working nurses in the public sector to at least receive an immediate increase whilst their organisation takes the appropriate steps in this tribunal to seek what it submits are fair pay and conditions as reflected by its log of claims," he said.
The union says Labor hasn't expressed a willingness to move its position after months of negotiations, so the strike will go ahead as planned.
"Our hospitals are in crisis with increasing activity and increasing numbers of nurses and midwives leaving for better pay interstate," general secretary Shaye Candish said.
"It’s not acceptable for the state government to continue turning a blind eye to the pay inequity that is seriously undermining this state’s largest female-dominated workforce."
The interim offer involved a three per cent wage increase with back-pay if nurses agreed to halt industrial action.
The commission's recommendations will be presented to delegates at a meeting on Tuesday, but members had rejected the offer in the past and the government needed to shift its position, Ms Candish said.
Mr Park said the government had moved to implement staffing ratios sought by the union and scrapped a cap on wages, but providing a 15 per cent boost in a year was not possible.
"What essentially they wanted us to do was wipe out 12 years of wage suppression in a single year," he said.
The union was urged to rethink the strike given the potential impact on patients.
Attempts could also be made to stop industrial action through the commission, the minister said.
Nurses walked off the job for 12 hours earlier in September, defying an order from the industrial umpire to call off the action.
Mr Park said that strike impacted almost 500 people with planned surgeries, many of them for serious conditions.
The government has offered a blanket three-year, 10.5 per cent pay rise, including a mandatory increase to superannuation payments, to all public-sector employees, a deal that falls well short of demands from various unions representing frontline workers.
