How Much is a Nurse Worth ?
Thursday, April 12, 2007 at 02:14PM For the first time that I (or anyone, I think) can remember, there is a real debate about whether the nurses have right on their side. This is partly because of a recognition that nurses are no longer as abysmally paid as was once the case, and almost certainly also because everyone realises that giving the nurses what they want this time will be very costly indeed.
Look elsewhere for a discussion of the detailed arguments. My purpose here is to consider the question in the title.
How much is anyone "worth" i.e. what should they be paid in return for the work they do ?
I suggest that the question has no single rational answer. How much someone is paid depends on so many things that, in the end, the only answer is that a person is worth whatever the labour market clearing rate for their services happens to be.
This will infuriate some, perhaps most, people, and indeed was not my starting position when I first considered these matters some decades ago, but I have been forced by the lessons of experience and the application of logic to adopt it.I hope to elaborate on this over the near future. If any reader is impatient, please do not hesitate to challenge me.
Reader Comments (2)
There is a global shortage of nurses. Ireland hasn't a great reputation as an employer of nurses. For example, delays in simple things like salary payments in the HSE are not uncommon. The cost of living is, relatively speaking, high. As a result, the country has to pay market or above market rates.
The problem is that increasing the number of nurses by ten percent (say) is going to cost a lot more than an extra 10 percent on the salary and overheads bill. In order to do this, nurses' pay is going to have to go up, say by 10 to 20 percent, so the total cost of the increase in cost is going to be around 125 percent.