P.S.A. wants to meet hospital board

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32874, 24 March 1972, Page 8

P.S.A. wants to meet hospital board

The chairman of the Sunnyside subgroup of the P.S.A. (Mr G. R. Benson) said yesterday that the Canterbury branch of the P.S.A. was not prepared to meet the Mental Health Institutions’ Transfer Committee, which consists of representatives of the North Canterbury Hospital Board and the administrative staffs of Sunnyside and Templeton hospitals.

The hospital board decided on Wednesday to recommend to the transfer committee that representatives of the P.SA. should be invited to attend at least part of the committee’s next meeting to discuss matters relating to the transfer. Mr Benson said that in the past the P.SA. had applied to meet the board itself and it still wanted to do so. It was strongly felt that the issues were important enough to warrant this and that the transfer committee lacked the authority to make decisions. He said that only a minority of the staff at psychiatric hospitals would be entitled to take part in a secret ballot to decide whether they wished to belong to the P.S.A or not The Minister of Health (Mr Adams-Schneider) had ruled that only some sections of the staff would be represented by the P.SA. during the next five years, but the secretary of the hospital board (Mr J. G. Laurenson) had inferred that this applied to all sections, said Mr Benson. Mr Benson outlined some of what he considered would be falls in conditions as a result of the transfer to hospital board control as at present envisaged. First would be the loss of belonging to the P.SA. There would be loss of job security as hospital boards did not have “permanent staff” like the Public Service; in the event of a dismissal appeal rights were unsatisfactory and undemocratic; the hospital board’s welfare society had the same subscriptions but benefits were reduced; there was loss of equal pay for equal work for men and women, and although allowances would be paid to cover this, they would eventually be eroded.

Psychiatric hospital work-

i ers would lose considerably 1 in leave, said Mr Benson. Sick t leave would not accumulate . each year; there would be no 1 marriage or maternity leave; ■ bereavement leave provisions s were inferior, they would lose ■ one commissioned day (the day after Boxing Day) and ! one recreation day. I The proposed pay system I involved holding back the t first three days of the wor- ■ kers* pay when the transfer i was made,- said Mr Benson, s This was so. the payments ! would come into line with the . hospital board’s system. “We view this quite seri- : ously as nobody wants to go I home with only half a week’s ■ pay.” said Mr Benson. “It ' will be made up to him even- _ s tually but we consider it most unsatisfactory, especially for • the lower-paid workers.” I Mr Benson said the P.SA. f had asked for but had not ■ got any description from the > hospital board of what work- . ing conditions would be. I Mr Benson said that what . he had said about conditions I also applied to Seaview Hospital, at Hokitika, which he > represented as representative j of the central committee of i the mental health group of . the P.SA.