Objection to Three-man Commission

Chronicle (Levin), 8 October 1946, Page 3

Objection to Three-man Commission

-Press Association

Bv Telearavh—

WELLINGTON, Oct. 7., Dissension from tlie three-man. commission plan was further evident among public servants today when it was reported that'three departments were holding meetings to discuss the situation and another department was holding three seetional meetings. A spokesman for one department 's staff said their meeting had resolved that officers of the Public Service Association had no mandate from the Service as a whole to arrange for an atleration in methods of control. It was considered full opportunity had not been given to all civil servants to express an opinion on the proposed control method or inethod of appointment of their representative on the Commission. The Government is to be asked to p.ostpone consideration on the question until the vifcw of the Service as a whole had been obtained. The spokesman admitted that the process of negotiations had been published in the ''Public Service Journal" but that paper did not reach all members of the service. He also claimed that the concrete proposals of the executive committee had not been placed sufficiently before readers. Tentative approaches to the question had been recorded in the journal before July this year. In the July minutes tlie minutes of the previous meetiug of the executive committee showed that a firm proposal was to be put to the Government for a threeman commission and the executive had voted itself power to inake final decision on the matter. The proposal was put in with 114 other remits for consideration by the district committee before this year's conferenee. As the 160 members of the committee had to consider all those remits, the proposal was unable to eommand the attention it warranted. It was claimed that if the Wellington district consideration of the question before the conference was any eriterion, then the Service througliout New Zealand had not been invited to weigh the implications of the proposal as it shouM have been. It beearae obvious now that the proposal was not placed before the Government with the unanimous backing of 30,000 public servants, he said. It was only when tliey were presented with a fait aecgmpli that members of the Service had revealed considerable disagreemeut with the plan. This was because hitherto they had not had adequate opportunity to argue its merits. Until the concrete proposal was published from the executive meeting in July, the Journal had published only "straws in the wind" whieh had appeared spasmodically for the last 20 years or so. As for the method of selection of the nominee, the spokesman said this should have been given much more prominence to members of the Service than had been done. If they had been kept more fully posted and consulted by some form of referendum on the question of the plan itself and on the ehoice of the Service nominee, the present impasse would not have arisen.