One hundred nurses at Imam Khomeini Hospital staged a sit-in at the hospital to protest “management’s refusal to address [their] collective demands.”
The head of the Nurses Association, Mohammad Sharif Moghaddam, told ILNA that management has ignored earlier promises to end discrimination in pay levels among nurses and has refused to cooperate with nurses’ representatives to monitor the pay schedules.
Sharif Moghaddam said nurses’ hours have declined by 10 to 15 percent in recent months.
He went on to add that “nurses are the engines of the hospital and have the greatest presence and work pressure; yet there is a very stark difference in their pay compared to what doctors earn.”
According to Sharif Moghaddam, the nurses are calling on the ministry of health to reform the pay scale system.
Earlier, Sharif Moghaddam had reported that the country is losing 300 nurses each year to foreign employers, pointing to the lack of recognition of their contribution to the system as one of the top reasons for the migration.
