R.A.F. MAN OFFERED £84 A YEAR JOB

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 73, 15 January 1947, Page 3

R.A.F. MAN OFFERED £B4 A YEAR JOB

In 1941, before he joined the R.A.F. as a teleprinter operator, Frank Martine, of Easter Road, Edinburgh, worked for £49 a year as a 20 year old office boy in a firm of shipping agents. When he returned he was offered his old job back at £34 a year. At Edinburgh the chairman of the Reinstatement Tribunal (Professor Alexander Gray) told the manager of the firm—Messrs. Moffat and Warden, of Leith—that the offer was absurd. It seems incredible that in 1941 such a wage existed for a person of 20. “Were you seriously meaning this offer of £B4 a year?” he asked. Martine nodded agreement when Professor Gray, with a smile, told him: “I think you should pull your socks up and find another job.” The Tribunal, with “some compunction in issuing a reinstatement order at a wage so low,” ordered that the firm should pay Martine £132 a year. When the firm’s manager said it was the custom for boys employed by them to find other jobs at 17 or 18, Professor Gray said:“Well, it is a most undesirable custom to engage people and then have them leave at that age without giving them a proper training. Anyway, this boy was kept on until he was 20. “Even if you were going to kick people out if you have no place for them, it should be done earlier.”