“ TOO YOUNG TO RETIRE AT 55.”

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19238, 27 November 1930, Page 9

“ TOO YOUNG TO RETIRE AT 55.”

NURSES COMPLAIN OF THE BOARD’S RULING. The decision of the North Canterbury Hospital Board that nurses shall be retired on superannuation at the age of fifty-five, does not meet with-the approval of nurses who were interviewed to-day. Their general opinion is that nurses are still capable of carrying on their work at that age. and that they should be given the option of staying on after the age of fifty-five if they are capable and desire to do so. One well-known nurse stated that in her opinion most nurses were quite able to work until they were sixty, and that if they wished to, they should be allowed to carry on till they had reached that age. “Nursing is hard work,” she said, “but it has the effect of keeping nurses fit, and that enables them to carry on longer than most women.” Regarding the superannuation, she said that very few nurses at present were in a position to retire at the age of fifty-five. Nurses joined the superannuation fund when they were first taken on the staff of the Christchurch Hospital, but many, after a few years’ service, left to take up positions at other hospitals. When they left, they; drew out their superannuation money. Then, perhaps, they would join the staff of the hospital again, and would have to start from the very beginning, as far as superannuation was concerned. They were the ones who could not afford to give up their work at fifty-five. If a nurse started as a probationer when she was young, and carried on in the hospital until she reached the age of fifty-five, she would be in a position to retire then. The only thing that would be left for those who could not live on their superannuation would be to take up private nursing, or go to another hospital where the age limit was not fifty-five. “In any case,” she concludued, “I think that, provided a nurse, if capable of carrying out her work satisfactorily, she should be given a chance of holding her position until she is sixty. There are many capable and efficient; nurses of that age at present working, and they haA’e time and again proved their worth.”