(DISCARDED DRAFT) DIARY OF A COFFIN DODGER CHAPTER G

DRAFT

DRAFT

Several days after being turfed out of the coffee shop, I visited a Drop-in centre a few doors down from the charity shop, where I had spent time drinking tea and reflecting on my experiences as a student in a faith-based school.

The coffee at the Drop-in centre isn't too bad, so I don't mind drinking or paying for it. There is a tin with a slot in the lid into which I and others, I guess, put a coin donation, as the sign stuck on the front of the tin suggests we do.

The organisers of the Drop-in centre chained the tin to a wooden bench running along the back wall of the centre.

In a line stretching along the bench were a row of tall urns: one held brewed coffee, another hot water, and completing the row were two urns containing soup: chicken flavoured in one, tomato flavoured in the other. Alongside the hot water urn were ceramic bowls containing either packets of white sugar, plastic stirrers, or tea bags. At the end of the row of bowls was a stack of white polystyrene cups. 

Though I had tried the soup on previous visits to the centre, the soup was not to my liking. It tasted like the generic-branded packets of instant soup I had bought at supermarkets.

Having put a donation into the tin, I poured myself a cup of coffee and poured milk into it from a carton I took and returned to the glass-fronted fridge at one end of the bench; I then walked through a side door out into the garden area running along one side of the centre.

I ambled across the grass to a bench in the far corner of the garden and sat down. 

I sipped the coffee and thought about a notice I had seen.

A notice board was inside the centre, to the left of the entrance doorway. There were notices either of people offering accommodation, people looking for accommodation, items for sale or people looking for work. However, the notice that caught my attention was a large notice offering work.

It wasn't the only one offering work at a call centre. What stood out for me, though, was this call centre took crisis calls. Though not just any crisis. But those crises which are brought on by mental health issues.

As I sat on the bench in the garden of the drop-in centre sipping the coffee, I reflected on my awful experiences working in a call centre designed to deal with these crises during my visit to the land down under, the visit after the Reverend S.B.'s funeral.

This chapter will narrate that experience and my reflections on male violence and its expression in systems designed to care for people with mental health issues. And, if I feel like it, I will also write about the Bonfire Night at the Reverend S.B.'s former property when fire consumed his shed.

 As mental illness is incurable, I found it intriguing that the private sector, with its demands from shareholders for ever-increasing dividend payouts and its appeal to company executives for bonuses to support their fatuous, glittering lifestyles, could make a profit from a cluster of illnesses that would always be a drain on company profits. Of course, for the private sector, there was a solution. 

During my first visit to Australia, I worked on the telephone for a helpline run by a charity, offering support during mental health crises. There were no time limits to these calls. But the company behind the call centre had time limited the calls and therefore found a surefire way to turn human misery into rivers of gold.

This company would only accept applications from Registered Nurses.

I found that interesting because the salary and conditions of Registered Nurses working with the public sector award would have cut into the call-centre company's profits. But of course, my salary at the call centre was not what it was meant to be according to that award. So I guess a sweetheart deal was in place between the nurses union and the company.

I learned about one such sweetheart deal during my first visit to Australia.

I was elected as a union delegate for the nurses union when I worked in a mental asylum in Sydney.  My curiosity about sweetheart deals between unions and employers was piqued when I examined the public and private healthcare awards for nurses. The nurses in the private sector, doing the same work as nurses in the public sector, were paid, both in terms of their hourly rate of pay and their shift penalties, less than nurses working in the public sector.

It all came down to a matter of numbers. That is the number of members each union had determined their clout at a political party conference, as I learned as a union delegate when I attended several of these conferences.

Initially, I was impressed by the number of nurses stated to be paid-up members of the nurse's union. When I expressed my pleasure to a fellow union delegate, she told me about the sweetheart deal.

In return for the private hospital sector operating under a different nurses award than the one in the public sector, private hospital owners signed all the nurses in their employ to the nurses union. The sort of leverage the nurses union could not exercise with the public hospitals and their nurses working under a public sector award. The number of members gained by this leverage gave the nurses union at the party conference clout when it came to voting on policies at the party conference. However, this clout was not used to the advantage of the nurses union female membership. The nurses union used its votes to advance the interests of the misogynistic right wing of the party.  

Award conditions such as maternity leave or the right of female nurses to keep working after marriage were never discussed. The nurses union at party conferences used their votes to side with motions put forward by the misogynist, right-wing of the party.

Through this activity, the nurses union had not only buried the vision of Florence Nightingale, they had driven a stake through the heart of that vision.

A vision that had given nursing its professional identity. That is, nurses were to be agents of change in health care delivery. As Miss Nightingale changed how health care was delivered by educating nurses, ensuring that education was provided by trained female nurse educators and that managers of wards and hospitals were appropriately trained nurse managers, she empowered women. She ensured patients were cared for by nurses with the skills and education appropriate to the task.