Nine grievances, one heated exchange, and a $13,000 payout for an aged care nurse
Employment Relations Authority member Claire English ruled on 8 September 2026 that an unresolved workplace clash, not unpaid wages, entitled a nurse to compensation.
The nurse joined Ultimate Care Group in 2022 as a caregiver, then trained up to become a registered nurse, taking on medication rounds, wound care and rostering duties. She told the Authority the work had once felt empowering, rewarding and deeply meaningful, but said pressure built once a new facility manager and clinical services manager took over in 2024, leaving staff stretched and, she said, unsupported.
She raised nine separate grievances against Ultimate Care Group, ranging from stopped overtime payments and the removal of paid on-call shifts to being blamed for medication errors and improper drug storage. English dismissed nearly all of them, finding that Ultimate Care Group had taken genuine steps to manage staffing shortages, that the nurse's own account did not establish how much unpaid time she had worked, and that being paid her agreed hourly rate, even if others earned more, broke no rule.
One grievance succeeded. During a shift in which a resident fell and his medication was delayed, the nurse says the clinical services manager blamed her for the fall and called her incompetent in front of colleagues; the clinical services manager and facility manager maintain it was the nurse who became aggressive during the exchange. The nurse said she quit and walked out that day. The facility manager called her and talked her into returning the next day, but the nurse was then asked to apologise for how she had reacted, while she felt the clinical services manager owed her an apology in turn, which never came. English found the underlying disagreement over the medication delay was never resolved, calling it "a failure on the part of Ultimate to be constructive, responsive, and communicative."
The Authority separately turned down a claim that the nurse had been constructively dismissed a month later, after a payroll error briefly left her short by 25.6 hours and the facility manager would not honour what the nurse believed was a promise of an extra day's pay for a missed study day. English found it more likely the nurse had misunderstood the arrangement, that the underpayment itself was corrected within a day, and that the dispute fell well short of the kind of breach that would justify resignation.
Ultimate Care Group was ordered to pay the nurse $13,000 for hurt and humiliation. English said the figure reflected a dispute that was "not so serious that the employment relationship could not continue." The Authority also declined to reduce the award for the nurse's own conduct during the confrontation, finding the failure to work through what had happened afterwards rested with the employer.
Costs were reserved, with the parties encouraged to resolve the question between themselves before the Authority applies its usual daily tariff.
