COMMENTARY: Nursing Our Troubles

 Dr James E. Knight

Our nurses find it hard to live on their salaries. So do teachers. Their jobs can be stressful, especially if they work well. Police officers can also complain. They are all essential.

A salary increase is always welcome, and certainly, there have been increases over the years. But does a salary increase on its own bring down the cost of living?  Don’t the costs of goods and services also increase, as well as do taxes, in whatever form? Don’t house and apartment rental costs increase?  The truth is that salaries can never catch up; what it costs to live is what must come down. That cannot be accomplished with individual salaries.

While doing a potentially stressful job, especially one in which they are expected to be calm, patient and polite, even while dealing with the most difficult human beings, people need not to be struggling to get by in their domestic lives. Of course not. So, what are the complaints?

A major complaint, if not the major complaint these days, is the inability to afford the ownership or rental of a decent dwelling place. That is, mortgage or rent. Then there are those who have young children who must be cared for while the parents are working on various shifts. That carries a significant cost. Without reliable public transportation, vehicle ownership and maintenance become necessary.  It is unrealistic to expect any salary increases that could solve these problems.

In its manifestos for the 1980 and 1989 general elections, the Antigua-Caribbean Liberation Movement, the ACLM, addressed these issues.  On page 37 of the 1980 manifesto, there is a description of COMMUNITY COMPLEXES and DAY CARE CENTRES, and a promise that “ACLM will seek to provide this [day care] programme as a fundamental priority”.

On the same page, on the question of transportation, we read: “ALCM will develop a COMPREHENSIVE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM, leaving room for private bus owners”.  “[This] will reduce Antigua’s high energy bill, in that it will reduce the high demand for cars …”

“HOUSING – A RIGHT, NOT A PRIVILEGE”, is what the ACLM declares on page 41of the same manifesto. “An ACLM government will build each year, at least the minimum [number of] houses required by all international estimates …”  An ACLM government would construct furnished apartments for new families and single men and women, in order to ease congestion in the city and the hunger for houses.” The ACLM also advocated since that time, that government establish a regulatory body to control home rental costs and conditions, just as we have a Prices and Consumer Affairs department.

Then, in the 1989 manifesto, ACLM once more lays out its comprehensive plan for making house ownership easier, beginning on page 48 of that document. Repeatedly, at public meetings, ACLM advocated special housing programmed for nurses, teachers and police officers. These all have very strong bargaining bodies, especially the nurses and teachers.

The problem is that instead of consistently advocating and pushing for these

absolutely necessary reforms, the bargaining bodies tend to go almost dormant when a party that they favour is in power, making no open complaints. Then, as soon as that party loses power, they declare absolute and acute crisis, and spring into action, making immediate demands that are often quite unreasonable. So what should be progressive advocacy and activism can only be seen as political troublemaking.

The solution to the troubling issues that our nurses may have, cannot be running away to work hard overseas, looking after others, after getting their training at the expense of their own people, who need their care. It’s at the national level that we must treat our own sores. We must nurse our troubles.

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