$100,000 back pay for Healthscope nurses

Published: 11 March 2022
 
It pays to check your payslips. What started as a casual discussion between two QNMU members over their payslips has resulted in 35 members receiving a collective $100,000 in back pay.

When two graduate nurses at Gold Coast Private Hospital checked their payslips in the tearoom, they were expecting to see a pay rise. 

But when their payslips showed different amounts, they discovered a huge classification error that would impact 35 of their fellow graduate nurses. 

While they were both graduate nurses, only one of them was being paid for that classification - the other had been classified as a re-entry nurse, meaning she’d been underpaid since starting in her role.

After contacting the hospital’s payroll team, the member got in touch with her QNMU Organiser, who encouraged her to reach out to her graduate colleagues to see if this error was also occurring for them. 

Word spread, and 35 graduate nurses contacted the QNMU for assistance. 

It was discovered Healthscope had been incorrectly classifying all their graduates as re-entry nurses, resulting in significant underpayments. 

Once this was raised with Healthscope, they assured the QNMU they had contacted all nurses in their graduate program – even those who no longer worked there – and rectified the situation, paying the nurses what they were owed.

The 35 graduate nurses received back pay amounts of between $2500 to $13,000.

Congratulations to our members who took action to contact payroll, escalate the issue, and provide their payslips to management.
  
It just goes to show how important it is to check your payslips – it really can make a difference.