NURSES' UNIONS

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 140, 15 June 1936, Page 10

NURSES' UNIONS

TWO APPLICATIONS

DENTAL AND MEDICAL

MINISTER APPROACHED

As an application for the registration of a Dental and Medical Nurses'. Union was followed by an application for a Dental Nurses' Union, the nurses responsible for the first application v/aited on the Minister of Labour (the Hon. H. T. Armstrong) to request that registration should not be granted to a I particular section of the industry. The position was outlined by one of the nurses, and the Minister promised to investigate the matter. In reply to ciuestions, the Minister said that he did* .not know of any barrier to medical and dental nurses being registered as one industrial union, and there would be no bar to nurses employed by private hospitals being included in the union, because private 'hospitals were operated for pecuniary gain. Hospital board nurses could also Ibe included as members, but the hosipital boards might apply for exemp- ! tion from an award on the grounds {that their hospitals were ndt operated j for gain. '

The dental and medical nurses were one industry, the Minister said, but they could apply for separate registration and it was for the Department to grant or refuse such applications. If a Dental and Medical Nurses' Unioa secured registration and made provision for dental nurses, registration would have to be refused to> any one section on the grounds that there was a union to which they could properly belong. The Minister said that second applications for registration signed by some of those who had signed the original application were cropping up daily. "A genuine union enrols the employees," he said, "and then the employers get to work afterwards. Fear ol losing employment induces employees to sign the employers' requisition also." The Minister said that he would arrange for the Registrar to examine both applications for registration, but he could not make any promises as he had not heard the other side; If the Department decided to consider registering the combined union the other side would have to be advised so that they would have an opportunity to show why registration should not be granted. If that 'v/ere done the combined union would have the right to reply to objections raised. In conclusion, the Minister said that division resulted in-weakening of numerical strength and facilitated control by the employers. It was not the desire of the Government to force the one-big-unioix idea on people who did not want it, but machinery had been provided in the new legislation for those who de-

sired it. If the application of the dental ana medical nurses was the prior one, and if the proposed union's rules provided for the proper inclusion of the others, he considered their claim for registrar tion would merit careful consideration.