Nurses Disappointed At New Wage Claim Delay

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30453, 29 May 1964, Page 2

Nurses Disappointed At New Wage Claim Delay

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, May 28. The Dominion executive of the New Zealand Registered Nurses’ Association was “disappointed and disturbed to learn that yet another review has been considered necessary by the Minister of Health (Mr McKay) and his advisers,” according to a statement issued today by its executive.

The executive was commenting on a statement by the Minister on the setting up of a special committee to review the salary claims of nurses and other hospitalemployed persons.

The association considered there was little point in further “review” as its claim was lodged last July, presented and expounded with supporting evidence last Nov-

The Eskiimo language has been added to this year’s summer courses at the University of Montreal. An eightweek course is designed for beginners and the instructor, Professor G. Lefebvre, guarantees to teach his students a Jot in a short time.—(Reuter).

ember and had since been considered by the nurses’ own advisory committee, the gen-

era! committee, presumably by an inter-departmental committee and finally, as evidenced by the Minister’s own statement by the Cabinet.

The statement said the machinery available to some groups of hospital employees for presentation of claims on conditions of employment (including salaries) had been considered for some time by hospital-employed nurses to be too cumbersome. The recent annual conference of the association directed the executive to ask the Minister to review the present salaries advisory committee machinery and to provide opportunities “which do not at present exist for conciliation and negotiation.” “The executive fully recognises that in presenting this claim for penal rates for shift work, work on week-ends, and public holidays, and for overtime worked beyond the accepted New Zealand pattern of an eight-hour day, it is introducing an entirely new concept in the remuneration of nurses,” said the statement.

“It does not seem unreasonable, however, to request for this occupational group conditions which are granted without question to all other workers in New Zealand and which have been available to nurses employed in the Health Department’s psychiatric hospitals for the past 20 years.”