Ethics and Nursing Compensation

I am happy to report that the dispute between nurses and the administration of the hospital in which I work mentioned in the previous post has been resolved.

I am doubly happy to report that the administration has decided to eliminate wage disparity among staff nurses, moving all nurses to a single wage scale regardless in which department of the organization they work.

I take a modicum of pride in this resolution because the philosophical commitment to wage equity was the position for which I argued from the beginning of the struggle. The administration has, apparently, changed its organizational mind in order to agree with me (and other nurses who felt the same).

I could be magnanimous and believe that the administration's change of position is wholly based upon its ethical commitment to wage equity, that they have done the right thing because it is right. I could believe that the administration is made up of good people in this fashion.

However, good people or not, no organization does what it does not have to do. No organization risks financial insolvency if it does not have to, not simply so that it can be said to have done the right thing. No. The administration's actions are clearly based upon the fact that financially it could produce wage equity. The money was there; the money was there all along.

So then what is the lesson to learn from this struggle?

The lesson I learned is multi-faceted but simple: Organizations do what they can do in the context of good reasons to do it. What the administration of our hospital needed in order to make the decision it did was a good and compelling reason to do it.

We, the nursing staff, provided that for the administration by demonstrating our collective will to continually advocate for a single wage scale, even if it meant taking our case to the hospital's board of directors and eventually to the public. Both of these intentions were in formulation at the time the announcement of a single and increased wage decision was made.

What the administration did was devote the financial resources it has to avoid the uncharitable position of being called upon by the board of directors to answer for a dissatisfied nursing staff, a possible "don't show up for work today" action, and the negative publicity such would generate in a small town that has the general impression that the hospital is a decent, caring organization.

The other part of the lesson I learned is never doubt yourself or the value of your endeavors when you know that you stand up for a right and good thing. There were times that we could have accepted the mediocre offers made to us, offers that were somewhat generous but did not resolve the issue of wage inequity.

Despite the fact that some of us could have benefited from these offers, we stood up for an ultimate good over immediate gain. We're nurses, after all. We like to take care of ourselves, all of ourselves.