Salary Confidentiality and Underemployment of Nurses

I have to admit. I was a supporter of salary confidentiality. I felt that it would endanger an individual if everyone knows how much you are making. That was until I saw the video of Adam Ruins Everything.

Take for example how hospitals have kept their salary rates from newly licensed nurses. With a fast turnover (nurses leaving for abroad or other for jobs like call centers) hospitals are facing staff shortages. With confidential salary rates, any new nurse would attempt to apply not even knowing how much he/she will earn.

But what if nurses knew what hospitals were offering? At a glance you’d think it would be chaos for nurses. Just as the video shows, people think that if other people knew their salary, they might be resented for how big/small they earn. But if you think about it, salary transparancy would mean big problems for the hospitals. For one thing, they can be hit with labor laws. Another is that nurses will avoid those hospitals offering pity sums for full shifts + overtime with minimal benefits.

On a side note, can you divulge the salary rate of nurses in hospitals without being sued?

I guess that can only happen in a near perfect world where we have a functioning PNA, effective and efficient representatives and proper implementation of laws. In the real world, far from Adam’s, is a world where hospitals reign supreme. It’s a world where you’re told to be thankful you have a (low paying) job. A world where you fear that you won’t be given a job certificate (your ticket to the world). A world where even if you do get a job certificate, you fear what your employer says about you when your future HR calls for a character check.

I sometimes think the hospitals have created an artificial shortage of jobs. That and combined with salary confidentiality has effectively renders nurses underemployed but overworked.

Underemployment is defined as the situation of highly skilled individuals like nurses working with reduced wages. In 2003, it was mandated that nurses should have be paid Php 25,000 a month. It’s now 2017 or 14 years later, hospitals have yet to follow the law.

You can see it in almost every hospital in the Philippines. A ward of 30 to 60 patients and only one or two nurses. The patients will be lucky if they also have a nursing aide/attendant and a wardman (shared with 2 other wards or the whole floor). The question remains, why are the wards and special areas understaffed? You’d think with this type of set up, there would be plenty of jobs open. Unfortunately in most cases and in most hospitals the owners or board or whoever is in charge, refuse to hire more.

According to recent news though, ANG NARS party list and DOLE have started to move for nurses in private hospitals.

Wake me up when September ends.

PS - Would you work at a hospital for Php 11,800 per month (before taxes)?