Industrial action by Victorian nurses has defeated attempts by the State Labor government to impose an arbitrary cap on public sector pay. Nine days of work bans and mass meetings led to pay rises of between 3. 8 and 6 per cent-breaking Premier Brumby's 3.25 per cent limit-and victories that include the retention of nurse-patient ratios and a promise to fund 300 extras nurses.

As a fairly new rep for the Australian Nursing Federation (ANF), I was elated to see how strong and unshakable a union can be when members stick together, especially in the face of WorkChoices and the almost constant bullying and harassment by upper management in some of the hospitals.

The Department of Human Services wanted to take away ratios that ensure nurses are not overburdened with too many patients.

They wanted to make shifts more flexible to the advantage of the employer-short or split shifts, in other words.

They also wanted to replace some nurses with personal care workers who are given almost no medical training at all.

In addition, Victorian nurses have been the lowest paid nurses in the country for many years.

In an outrageous attack on union rights, the government wanted to use WorkChoices to force nurses to negotiate based on 148 separate sites. The IR Commission rejected the ANF's application for a secret ballot for protected industrial action in early October because, it claimed, we were pattern bargaining, which is illegal under WorkChoices.

Yet even in the climate of fear, threats and bully tactics, ANF membership grew in confidence. At our first unpaid stop work meeting on October 16, my chest swelled with pride when we arrived at the venue. It quickly filled to capacity and the buses were streaming in.

This is the point when I realised that nothing could stop us.

On that day I really felt a part of something much more than a stop work meeting. I felt like I was part of a movement.

Partial victory

Not all nurses got exactly what they wanted. We did not achieve our 6.5 per cent target.

Also the government will ask for further pay rises to be based on productivity trade-offs.

Up until the resolution of the dispute, the nurses were prepared for anything. I had heard from a number of sources that some workers were ready to walk off the job entirely. I really felt like that could have happened.

The union had the support to go further and inflict a serious defeat on the government.

But, overall, it was a good win and we got most of the core things that we needed. And there's potential for further struggle.

Six hundred nurses had their pay docked by up to 60 per cent, even though they continued to work throughout the dispute. The union is organising in response to this further attack.

By Lenny Colton ANF delegate, Melbourne, with Tom Barnes