SALARIES OF NURSES

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22310, 26 January 1938, Page 8

SALARIES OF NURSES

SUGGESTION FOR HIGHER WAGES

NOTICE OF MOTION TO MARLBOROUGH BOARD

ITHE PRESS Special Service.]

BLENHEIM, January 25.

The contention that the nursing profession was greatly underpaid was made at a meeting of the Marlborough Hospital Board by one of the members (Mrs F. Redwood), who gave notice of her intention to move at the next meeting that the board should grant increases in salary to all members of its nursing staff. Mrs Redwood's remarks were made following the adoption of the report

which authorised a revision in wages of various members of the domestic staff.

"I consider, and I have contended it for years, that the nurses are very much underpaid," she said, "and just to test the position, I intend to move that the salaries of all nurses on our staff be increased. I have no doubt that I will get the same answer that our nurses' conditions compare favourably, and more than favourably in some cases, with other parts of New Zealand, but my argument is that no nurse in the country is paid adequately for her services. "I know a good many people who will gladly pay £2 a week for a woman to do house duties, and I do not say that they are not worth it, but they certainly do not do the work, nor have they anything like the responsibility of a nurse. "It was time someone took a definite stand on the general question of nurses' salaries," Mrs Redwood declared, adding that she did not think any of the patients who have been through hospital would say that the nurses were paid anything like an adequate salary. The board will discuss the question at the next meeting,