Nurses upset laundry staff

Press, 14 August 1980, Page 8

Nurses upset laundry staff

Hospital laundry staff have taken issue with comparisons made recently between salaries paid to principal nurses and laundry staff. Mr N. T. Lyons, the president of the Society of Hospital Linen Service Managers, said that comments made by Miss Shona Carey, the director of the Nurses’ Association, had caused him concern. Miss Carey said last month that principal nurses earned little more than a “person in charge of the laundry."

Mr Lyons said, “I appreciate that our nursing officers do a first-rate job arid if; they can manage to gain 'extra remuneration, good luck to them. However, I ’ object in ■ the strongest terms to linen service managers, formerly called laundry managers, being addressed as 'the person in charge of the laundry’. “As a person in charge of a linen service I feel I can speak . with authority on what a linen service man-: ager does and how a laundry works. First. and foremost the person in charge has to be a competent manager but also he must have the technical skills peculiar to the demanding job.” Mr Lyons said linen service managers were in charge of many people and were responsible for plant worth many millions of dollars.

“A principal nurse may have the worry of administering a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week hospital service but where, I ask, does the linen to outfit the wards, operating theatres, and accident and emergency departments come from to enable those 24 hours to be worked?" Linen service managers had not had a salary rise since 1971. If the nurses were successful in their claims for higher salaries, linen service managers could perhaps justifiably claim loss of. relativity.