Tweet
Nurses want outstanding issues resolved before seeking double pay
NURSES employed to state-run hospitals and clinics say they will be temporarily switching their attention from achieving a 100 per cent pay hike, and will over the next two months instead focus on getting government to honour its existing agreements with them.
Following an extraordinary meeting Monday, the nurses voted to press for their existing agreements to be honoured by the end of June and to start a 'public education campaign' to bring attention to their plight.
"Our members decided unanimously that by June 30, Government should implement every item on the 2006/08 heads of agreement", Nurses Association of Jamaica (NAJ) president Edith Allwood-Anderson told the Observer yesterday. "Since we have the heads of agreement that has been breached, let us have it implemented by June 30, and see where we go from there," she added.
Allwood-Anderson said the NAJ was initially negotiating for a doubling of their pay for the period 2008/10, in keeping with a pre-election promise by Finance Minister Audley Shaw, while his Jamaica Labour Party was in Opposition.
She said the nurses would specifically be calling on Minister Without Portfolio in the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service, Senator Dwight Nelson, to ensure that the 2006/08 agreement was honoured in full.
"Now the nurses are saying Minister Nelson is the man; he said all commitments will be honoured, we are asking him to honour the heads of agreement that he signed to and is now 10 months late", she said.
She said outstanding issues in the 2006/08 agreement include:
. implementation of a reclassification done by Prof Edwin Jones in 1997;
. review and regularising of anomalies in the pay structure, which sees nurses at higher levels getting less pay than those at lower levels in some instances;
. an additional bus to transport nurses to and from work;
. the addition of 60 emergency posts; and
. birth kits and supplies for midwives.
The NAJ head made it clear, however, that the Government was not off the hook with respect to the doubling of the nurses' pay.
"Minister Shaw voluntarily told us that he is going to give the nurses double pay. Some of the nurses, when you double their pay is only $70,000 before tax...The minister knew what he was saying", Allwood-Anderson said Monday.
The NAJ president said she did not anticipate the 'public education campaign' would affect normal work as "it will take the form of nurses educating every single member as well as the public" about the issues.
NURSES employed to state-run hospitals and clinics say they will be temporarily switching their attention from achieving a 100 per cent pay hike, and will over the next two months instead focus on getting government to honour its existing agreements with them.
Following an extraordinary meeting Monday, the nurses voted to press for their existing agreements to be honoured by the end of June and to start a 'public education campaign' to bring attention to their plight.
"Our members decided unanimously that by June 30, Government should implement every item on the 2006/08 heads of agreement", Nurses Association of Jamaica (NAJ) president Edith Allwood-Anderson told the Observer yesterday. "Since we have the heads of agreement that has been breached, let us have it implemented by June 30, and see where we go from there," she added.
Allwood-Anderson said the NAJ was initially negotiating for a doubling of their pay for the period 2008/10, in keeping with a pre-election promise by Finance Minister Audley Shaw, while his Jamaica Labour Party was in Opposition.
She said the nurses would specifically be calling on Minister Without Portfolio in the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service, Senator Dwight Nelson, to ensure that the 2006/08 agreement was honoured in full.
"Now the nurses are saying Minister Nelson is the man; he said all commitments will be honoured, we are asking him to honour the heads of agreement that he signed to and is now 10 months late", she said.
She said outstanding issues in the 2006/08 agreement include:
. implementation of a reclassification done by Prof Edwin Jones in 1997;
. review and regularising of anomalies in the pay structure, which sees nurses at higher levels getting less pay than those at lower levels in some instances;
. an additional bus to transport nurses to and from work;
. the addition of 60 emergency posts; and
. birth kits and supplies for midwives.
The NAJ head made it clear, however, that the Government was not off the hook with respect to the doubling of the nurses' pay.
"Minister Shaw voluntarily told us that he is going to give the nurses double pay. Some of the nurses, when you double their pay is only $70,000 before tax...The minister knew what he was saying", Allwood-Anderson said Monday.
The NAJ president said she did not anticipate the 'public education campaign' would affect normal work as "it will take the form of nurses educating every single member as well as the public" about the issues.
Comment