Wage Dispute

It is somewhat funny to me that many people think that being a nurse should be in and of itself satisfying. That the generally high esteem in which the public holds us should be reason enough to do the sometimes hard, sometimes gory, sometimes horrible job we do. To be an ER nurse, like being a hospice nurse, seems to double this sentiment.

People watch too much TV.

In fact, and I know this may come as a shock to some people, nurses like to get PAID for what we do. I don't know a single nurse who would work as one unless s/he got paid to do so. Like many workers, nurses may not be paid as much as they would want--no one goes into nursing to get rich--but they work at nursing in (perhaps unrealistic) hope of being paid for their labor what it is truly worth. Given that peoples' lives are often at stake, it seems that what we do should be worth a lot.

Recently, however, the hospital in which I work that employs over a hundred nurses has chosen to give a small minority of those nurses (approximately seven) a 15% wage increase simply because they are "surgery" nurses. There really is no other way to explain it.

The nurses in question have no more education, licensure, or skills than other nurses in the organization; they do not work harder or more; they are required to have fewer skill certifications than ER nurses (1 versus 4); and they do not even do what many other nurses in the organization are required to do: float to other departments, respond to codes, start IVs (the anesthetists or same day center nurses do it) or push medications (again, anesthetists or ICU nurses do it).

The administration's rationale for this unfair compensation increase is that surgery generates a lot of revenue for the hospital and we certainly can't allow the surgery department to close down. Forget the fact that it was not in jeopardy, that surgery nurses were not threatening to leave, and the fact that you can no more run a hospital without medical surgical nurses, same day center nurses, emergency room nurses, recovery nurses, etc.

The result has been that many of the other nurses in the hospital feel as if their labor has been de-valued. They feel that the organization has told them that they are not worth as much. There is foment of unrest and talk of walk outs.

I know the public is not used to the idea that nurses could refuse to work. It seems like patient abandonment. It seems wrong. But nurses who won't work for substandard or unfair wages or nurses who will not work under the stressful conditions of unsafe patient loads are not trying to be hurtful to patients. They are trying to demonstrate to health care organizations that they shouldn't be taken for granted.

I, for one, like being a nurse. But not being a nurse for nothing.