I hope the nurses stick to their guns. Going out on strike will certainly raise awareness as to their plight. Many Thai professionals are grossly underpaid. Nurses are only the tip of the iceberg.

If the government .Increase the number of nurses that have full time contracts as regular civil servants this means extending all of the benefits that go along with the position. Unfortunately, the MoH does not have the money to do this. It would be an expensive proposition and grant nurses additional costly benefits in respect to the existing agreements on pensions, vacations, job security and health benefits. I ballpark this cost at billions of baht over the expected employment cycle of the nurses. Think about it. Let's say the benefits provided amount to 20,000baht per nurse per annum (and that's a conservative estimate). 17,000 X 20,000 = 340,000,000 baht. After 3 years that would be over 1billion baht. Where is the money to come from?

There is also a very powerful interest group that doesn't want to see the situation change: The private hospitals. They would be forced to match the pay and benefits and this could seriously arode the profits for some of these money making ventures.

The nurses have good reason to expect to be treated fairly. Unfortunately, Thailand just doesn't have the money to do it as things stand now.

"Where is the money to come from?" ... From the Rice Subsidies ... 420 BILLION baht.

This government would have plenty of money if it was not for greedy politicians pilfering the coffers...not to mention the wealthy not paying the correct amount of tax...

Or in some cases ANY tax.

Nurses at Ram hospital in Chiang Mai were making about 22,000baht a month and nurses aids who did most of the crap work made 12,000baht a month. Benefits I know nothing about. The government hospitals have a major staffing problem, my girlfriends sister had surgery at Mae Hong Song hospital last year and a family member had to be there full time to assist her as the nurses were too far and few inbetween to handle the ward.

As usual the excuses for not paying people enough for what they do. Go on strike girls and boys let them see what it is all about.

This is a slap in the face to Suphan, who wasn't worried about the nurses strike.

It seems to me that Suphan was sympathetic to the nurses, and had also set the 3 year plan in place that Yingluck referred to, so I believe they (Suphan & Yingluck), are on the same page.

One difference is the nurses are qualified to do their job.

Yingluck was elected. In a democracy (regulations such as not falsifying documents about your military service aside), that's the beginning and end of the qualification process.

Correction: her party received the most votes (?). She was shoe-horned into the leadership by her criminal brother. I suppose if you are gullible enough to believe the witch hunt over alleged forged documents you will believe that Thailand has a democracy.

She was NOT elected in a constituency vote so NO Thais actually voted for her.

She is a party list MP who does not represent the public in any way shape or form.