Howard Campbell, Gleaner Writer
A militant Edith Allwood-Anderson, president of the Nurses Association of Jamaica, spurs on her colleagues during a protest in front of the Ministry of Finance, Heroes Circle, Kingston, last Wednesday. The nurses are calling on Finance Minister Dr. Omar Davies to address their protracted salary negotiations. - NORMAN GRINDLEY/DEPUTY CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER
MANY JAMAICAN nurses went to church last Sunday to mark the start of National Nurses' Week. Many may have prayed for an end to their salary rift with the Government.
Edith Allwood-Anderson, the feisty president of the Nurses Association of Jamaica (NAJ), led the altar call. Fitting, for during last week's islandwide protest by the organisation's near-2,000 members, her passionate 'message' was almost evangelical.
Last Friday, following three days of demonstrations that affected operations at hospitals, Ms. Allwood-Anderson and her executive met separately with Health Minister Horace Dalley and Dr. Omar Davies, the Finance Minister.
'WE DESERVE THE RAISE'
There has been nothing definitive coming out of those meetings, but in her second stint as NAJ head, Ms. Allwood-Anderson is determined that her members will get a better deal than the 22 per cent salary increase, over two years, that the Government has offered.
The nurses are bargaining for 80 per cent in the first year and 40 per cent in the second. According to Allwood-Anderson, 51, considering the conditions in which many nurses have to work, they deserve a significant raise.
RESTROOMS ARE APPALLING
"In hospitals across the island and primary care facilities, there is nowhere that nurses can get a meal because there are no canteens," she told The Gleaner in April. "The restrooms are appalling, and the things that nurses have to work with in these days of HIV and STIs (sexually transmitted infections). We need better," she said.
Ms. Allwood-Anderson began organising her 'troops' in April when the NAJ withdrew from the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions (JCTU), which members said had not properly represented their interests.
The NAJ's withdrawal meant they were out of the second Memorandum of Understanding signed by public sector workers and the Government.
They signed the first in 2004 which ensured that 150,000 jobs in the public sector were saved.
It also broke the NAJ's 16-year relationship with the JCTU, a split Ms. Allwood-Anderson does not regret.
"In terms of salary, we had gone back 10 years and were not able to negotiate a good increase," she said at the time. "Nurses were not guaranteed any good deals for housing, car loans or land."
LITTLE IMPROVEMENT
Born in Prospect, St. Elizabeth, Ms. Allwood-Anderson knows the rigours of being a nurse in Jamaica. She was a public health nurse for 15 years at the Mandeville Regional Hospital, entering the system two years after graduating from the Bellevue School of Nursing in 1978.
In almost 30 years in the profession, she says there has been little improvement in the salaries of nurses.
The widowed mother of three sons who currently works in administration at the Mandeville Regional Hospital believes it is time that the Government addresses this disparity.
