Gareth Manning, Gleaner Writer

First Vice-President of the Nurses Association of Jamaica (NAJ), Sharon Brotherton, says nurses are not completely satisfied with Government's wage offer, but are willing to go ahead with it until nurses are reclassified.

Representatives from the NAJ and the Ministry of Finance agreed on Friday that nurses would be reclassified in July 2007 as part of a wage agreement initiated by the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions (JCTU). The agreement came just after nurses had grown militant again, declaring that they would restrict their duties to assigned areas and hours only, if their demands were not met.

But after intervention by the JCTU, nurses agreed to a 19 per cent increase in salary in the first year of the current Memorandum of Understanding and a five per cent increase in year two for nurses at all levels.They were originally pressing for an 80 per cent increase in the first year and 40 per cent in the second year. But Government only offered 23 per cent to Level One and Two nurses and 22 per cent to Level Three for the two-year period.

"It is far below what we were agitating for but as it said, we are bounded by the MoU, so we were asking for the maximum within the MoU," Brotherton told The Sunday Gleaner.

President of the JCTU, Senator Dwight Nelson, said the offer was good and should allow for immediate increases in the nurses' salaries.

"What has happened is that the second year has been reduced and that reduction has been placed on the first year so it means an immediate increase in substance as far as the movement in wages is concerned," he explained.

The nurses are also set to get increases in allowances for professional accessories and tailoring, but they will be placed on standby three times per week instead of two.

The parties will meet at the Ministry of Finance and Planning at a later date to sign a comprehensive heads of agreement that includes these and other items agreed to in previous meetings.