Hospital and staff receive plenty of support

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 6, Issue 275, 21 February 1989, Page 3

Hospital and staff receive plenty of support

Volunteers were turned away during last week's strike by hospital workers and the ones that were called upon found the experience far from demanding.

Waimarino Hospital Principal Nurse Eve Rush said she was overwhelmed at the response from local

people offering to help. She said the ones that were used found some of the patients

doing much of the work themselves too. Eve said she arrived in the morning with a 'game plan' for the volunteers to work to but found it unnecessary to a large extent because patients had already made their own breakfast and made their beds. A volunteer was given the task of answering the phones but the Principal Nurse said it had rung just four times in the morning. Many recent expatients had called in to see if they could help, said Eve. "I'd really like to thank not only the volunteers at the hospital but those who were waiting to be called if needed," said Eve Rush. A feature of the day was the lunch, which was fish and chips provided by the Ritz tearooms, and beer for some of the patients. Also the quietness was unusual, said Eve. She said the patients had found it very peaceful with no cleaning equipment operating. She said some of the staff could not go on strike, such as the normal night roster nurses. Patients' safety was not to be put at risk through the strike, she said, so nurses had

to cover the night shift. Eve herself was required to strike, but was at the hospital through the day. She said she would take her pay but put it towards the strike fund. "Support for this strike has come from

not just all the staff but the patients as well," said Eve. Staff striking are members of the PSA, the New Zealand Nurses' Association and the Service Workers' Association. Hospital workers are protesting at their employers' offers in the

current wage round, which workers say is a "self funded pay rise" of $10 per week. They reason that the employers' conditions of cutbacks in transport assistance, night rates and penal rates mean in the long run that some workers will be

about $20 worse off rather than $10 better off. They are protesting at the cuts in funding for the health care system as a whole, said Eve Rush. The cuts will lead to a whole range of problems, she said.