Readers Write

Northern Advocate, 27 September 1943, Page 2

Readers Write

I am sure the chairman of the Hos-

pital Board will be most gratified to have the assurance of “Nurse” that

NURSES’ SALARIES

“the nurses will not willingly put the care of their profession in the

hands of a union secretary.” The care of their profession is in the hands of the nurses themselves. The care of the nurses and the betterment of their conditions is> the job of a union or association, call it what you will. If nurses and then pre-election sympathisers think nurses' pay is not commensurate with the work performed, obviously theii association is not very efficient. 1 would like to correct “Nurse” re her allegation that all the Government has done for them is to tax (“rob" as she puts it) them up to 24 per cent. Nurses, along with other wage and salary-earners, pay 12i per cent, in taxation —1/6 in the £ for national security and 1/- in the £ for social security True, they are taxed on board allowance at the rate of £1 pel week, as are others whose conditions of employment require that they live in. If “Nurse” could get full board away from her work at £1 per week she would be indeed lucky. I cannot understand the fear of “Nurse' that union secretaries might rob nurses of 24 per cent, of their love for their work. I presume that “Nurse,” along with her co-workers, took up the work because she liked it, and evidently did not find it too “exacting and irksome,” or even underpaid, or she would not still be a nurse.

The chairman of the Hospital Board made a misleading statement in your correspondence column when he said “the reason why junior nurses find more difficulty in making ends meet now, than they did in 1935 is that the purchasing power of the £ is consid erably less than it was at that time.' He omitted to say that there has been an increase in nurses’ salaries since 1935. If the members of the Hospital Board are really concerned about the amount of money the nurses have left after paying taxation, let them show their sincerity by doing all they canto have nurses’ salaries increased throughout the Dominion, but don’t raise a screen of sentiment about the issue.—l am, etc., C.C.