MOTHERS AND INFANTS: UNION POLICY

Greymouth Evening Star, 21 May 1949, Page 4

MOTHERS AND INFANTS: UNION POLICY

NEW PLYMOUTH, This Day (P.A.) —“Has the time not come for all New Zealanders to ask whether any good hospital service can operate with a 40-hour week?” asked Dr Doris Gordon, of Stratford, formerly Director of Maternal and Infant Welfare, in a statement today. “In addition to ever-increasing costs of food and supplies, an award rer cently swept willy-nilly all the private hospital domestic workers, laundry workers and so on into the Hotel and Restaurant Workers’ Union. Week-end work must now be paid for at penal rates, but the management may not pass on the extra cost to the consuming public without protracted dealings with the Price Tribunal, and, further, in any case the management does not want to inflate inflation with yet higher tariffs.” “Capitulated” To Union It was common knowledge that the powers-that-be had staved off as long as possible the amalgamation of the private hospital domestic workers with the Hotel and Restaurant Workers’ Union, but ultimately capitulated to the union’s demands. Dr Gordon asked whether, in consequence, the authorities would increase the social security benefits to patients to enable them to meet the increased hospital costs or instruct the Price Tribunal to authorise a blanket rise in the fees of £1 Is a week to cover week-end services.

Either of those steps would mean more inflation, she commented. Or would vthe authorities take their courage in both hands and by Orders-in-Council declare that maternity nursing, being a unique contract between women in need and certain public-spirited workers, was outside all union jurisdiction? Dr Gordon suggested that, if all restrictions were removed from maternity service, the laws of supply and demand would soon operate to the relief of nurses and the advantage of mothers. Desire To Give Service

“Mothers and infants are the immediate problem, for their feeding and washing is this week’s headache,” she said. Never had the ranks of maternity nursing been so depleted. There were, however, many other women who were more than willing to serve in whatever capacity they were able at ordinary, not penal, rates of reward. Why, Dr Gordon asked, should the Hotel Workers’ Union stand between these willing workers and their genuine desire to give service to mothers and infants?