3% for nurses!

Scan page 2

By Mary A SHROUD of secrecy seems to surround the current pay review body which is deliberating on nurses' pay. April 1 is when nurses are due to hear what pay rise, if any, this body is to award us.

Nothing has been 'leaked' to the national press, nothing has been sent to the NHS unions.

Nothing has been done in advance to organise resistance to what inevitably will be either a paltry 3% or, as rumoured amongst nurses, a wage cut for student nurses and dramatic rises for ward sister grades and above to deepen divisions amongst nurses.That is all speculation, however.

What we do know though is some of the evidence that has been submitted to the pay review body. It seems that NUPE has emphasised parity with other professional workers - a neat little table shows how far behind librarians, primary kchool teachers and managemer executives is nurses' It lso shows the tasks that nursine auxiliaries do - which they spouldn't be doing and seems i suggest that more money is the best reward! Although nursing auxiliaries should, of Bourse, receive massive wage rises, we should not sanction the unfair workload that is placed upon them by using it as justification for a pay rise.

The report also stresses how nurses' earnings are below the poverty line and calls for a f32 a week flat rate minimum increase which is better than calling for a percentage increase solely. Huwever it fails to pose a long-term solution which inevitably should be a sliding scale of wages, in line with inflation.

We don't want to be compared with policemen or firemen — our negotiators should not be going, cap in hand, saying how deserving we are. They should be giving us a lead, organising nurses to fight for a decent wage - because no pay review body will give us one.

WHILE the Tories are using the police as a para-military strike-breaking force against the miners, Home Secretary Leon Brittain has now given the police 'permission' to carry submachine guns.

Twelve police marksmen are to be trained in the use of the 9mm Heckler and Koch MP5K quick-firing weapon which fires 14 bullets a second.

The official excuse for this development is that the weapons are needed to protect visiting Heads of State, and in particular President Reagan, at the Lancaster House summit in June.

But that just establishes a precedent for yet another ominous extension of the technology of policing and repression. which in reality is directed against real and supposed treats to "national security 2= ¿ stabilin* Inu Je Labuan Part.

A-E I e La ta.: Si adTra per year, £2 unwaged, 50p OAPs

----- pull-quotes -----

Police guns

Rodi. Lomõe SEI- Subscription is £7