The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-01-14
HOSPITAL help :
Tolls Z HOURS
FOR $50 4 MONTH
Liable to Discharge at
Whim of Endowers
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register at agencies and are called
by the hospital when required by a
special nurse This is for the nurses
directly at the rate of Sc to 81 per L
hour day. The patient must pay the
hospital $3.50 to 81 day for each
special nurses. This is for the nurses
meals. These meals are usually worth
80 cents at any coffee-poJ restaurant.
Special nurses are out of work from
one-quarter to one-half of the year.
Nurses working for the hospital re-
ceive SSa to $50 per month as rule
and an provided with living quarters.
The buildings housing the latter are
mostly tumble-down houses, used as
private residences in their day, and
the plumbing is always out of order.
Froze in Sleep.
In one downtown hospital the boiler
used to blow out in the nurses home
nearly every winter. To become a
trained nurse, two years hospital
training is required, at the sumptuous
salary of $25 a month, graciously
called an allowance" In some Hos
pitfalls much less is allowed. Hospitals
are always understocked with nurses,
worked TO the limit.
Unenviable as the nurses lot is,
that Of the unframed workers is far
worse. The orderlies, messing around
sick-room conditions unnecessary to
describe, never get more than $50 a
month living out and $50 month
FIXING in. Blood, messy dressings,
filthy sores, pus and groans, all are
part OF the days work for them. The
ward-maid is his female equivalent,
with SALARY of $50 a month. Por-
tiers are kept hopping and busting
always, usually in the corridors Tor
visitors to see. The housekeeper, his
female tyrant, is usually sour
virago whom life seems to have pro-
vided with a permanent grudge. The
porter get from $50 month in some
institutions to $50 in others.
Behind Kitchen Door.
Kitchen workers in any hospital are
the queerest collection ever beached
ON any shore. Scandinavians, Greeks,
1indus, Cinnamon, Enghshmen and
81 varieties OF Slavs and Latins are
found. They have3 been ocean-tramp
cooks, ordinary seamen, lumberjacks,
college students, hoboes or any COM
binatlon of these. Drug addicts
syphilitics, chronic alcoholics and oc-
casionally nice young man who has
run away from home are there. The
cooks cannot usually cook nickeis
worth, but what can be expected for
$50 a month?
Raisins and Reaches.
Living quarters for all the help are
aot fit for beasts. Everything is
made of decaying wood except the
plumbing, which might as well be.
Warm water usually doesn't run, a
decent bath is hard to get, and the
ss~+s are out of order more than
hair - time. The workers food is a
crying scandal in every hospital in
the city whose workers the writer has
met. Sleek reaches vie with raisins
in the perennial tapioca or rice pud-
ding served as a dessert. A while
ago the internes at Bellevue went on
strike as protest against the rotten
meals served there.
Hospital workers have always ex-
pressed q desire to be organized
They are tired of being fired without
notice or redress, of being cheated by
dishonest employment agencies, thru
which they get their jobs and which
have understandings with dishonest
housekeepers. They are sick of the
conditions outlined above. They offer
fertile field for organized labor to
enter. But they must be dealt with
honestly.