PUBLIC SERVICE CLAIMS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 116, 1 March 1950, Page 5

PUBLIC SERVICE CLAIMS

TRIBUNAL FINISHES HEARING DECISION RESERVED (P.A.) WELLINGTON, Feb. 28. The Government Service Tribunal after hearing the final submissions by the advocates, concluded to-day the hearing of claims for increased salaries and margins for public servants under commission control and reserved its decision. Mr E. R. Winkel, for the Public Service Commission, submitted that the applicants had totally failed to make a case for increased margins based on the 1949 standard wage pronouncement and in conformity with ruling rates. He claimed that such evidence of ruling rates as was offered was too inconclusive to be relied on. “No matter what evidence may have been called to establish a rate for a particular industry in a particular locality, it does not follow without fur ther proof that that rate is sufficiently widespread to be accepted,as the Dominion standard,” said Mr Winkel. “Nor does it follow that increases in a. particuar occupational group should be followed by precisely the same increases in other occupational groups. “If, for example, it could be shown that building tradesmen’s rates had increased in one locality, it does not follow automatically that typists’; sal-/, aries should be increased by the same figure, or, indeed, at all,” said Mr Winkel. Mr J. P. Lewiu, for the Pubhc Service Association, said the hearing- represented the climax of a three-year struggle to establish the principle of fair relativity in Public Service wages. He made that point, lie said, in case it might be thought that he had gone to unnecessary length either ,in evidence or argument. Mr Lewin said that the superannuation scheme had been quoted as an advantage enjoyed by public servants, but it should be noted that they “onjoy superannuation only if they pay for it, and, second, the incidence r.f such schemes in industry is now much greater than it used to be.”