THE CONTENTS of Professor Nicholson’s letter which were published in the Daily Nation of August 17 are quite baffling for someone of his training and experience, and appears to be a less than feeble attempt to add his support to the industrial action taken by BAMP.
The professor quotes from a statement of the chairman of the QEH’s board which was carried in the Saturday Sun of August 14 which states that “the board may at any time determine the engagement [read contract] of the employee on giving three months’ notice in writing to that effect or on paying him one month’s salary”.
The professor states that there is “internal dissonance in that statement” and deduces that the employees can be terminated without notice and without need for explanation on either side.
He states: “She or he [the doctor] has no contractual obligation to or from the employer.”
Quite inexplicably, the professor has come to this conclusion from a statement which states expressly and quite clearly that the QEH is contractually obligated to give an employee three months’ notice or one month’s pay in lieu of notice.
Employees, including doctors the world over, are engaged under employment contracts which give employers the right of termination and employees the right of exit.
Surely Professor Nicholson is not suggesting that doctors and other employees of the QEH be treated differently from what is a worldwide norm.
Difficult to believe
Unlike the goodly professor, most reasonable persons would find it difficult to believe that “young doctors or specialists from the Barbadian diaspora” whom the professor says that the QEH’s board is trying to attract, would realistically expect to be engaged in contracts, in any part of the world, which are so ironclad in their favour, that their employers, in this case the QEH, would have no right of termination.
Such an expectation would not only be unrealistic but highly unreasonable; but then again we know that the reasonable man adapts himself to the world, whereas the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
PHILIP F. CORBIN
