Nurses' strike: Private hospitals form relations committee to look into wages of employees

KOCHI: For the first time, private hospitals in the state have formed the industrial relations committee, as stipulated by the labour department, to decide on the wages for their employees in the wake of nurses’ strike spreading in Kerala. With the labour commissioner as chairman, the committee has ten members each representing employees and employers.
The committee has already held two meetings, and took a decision on the classification of hospitals based on the facilities available. So far, the wages have been fixed generally for all hospitals irrespective of their facilities or number of beds, a point the hospitals’ management have been opposing for years.
Now, the hospitals have been re-classified, said Advocate Husain Koya Thangal, general secretary of Kerala Private Hospitals Association. Small clinics without in-patient facilities will be one category while hospitals with a minimum of 20 beds would be another. There are also classifications for hospitals with higher bed strength, those in urban and rural areas and also the institutions with super-speciality departments.
“The next meeting would discuss the wages of employees. We hope there would be a proper system for fixing the salary package of all employees including nurses and para-medical staff,” said Thangal.
The association also reiterated its earlier decision not to accept the recommendations of the Balaraman committee which wanted the minimum wages of nurses to be increased to Rs 12,900 from Rs 8,500. The committee’s report had led to showdowns between nurses’ associations and hospitals management earlier, as the nurses wanted the government to implement it at the earliest while the managements opposed it.