STATE EMPLOYEES AND EMPLOYERS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1005, 21 December 1910, Page 4

STATE EMPLOYEES AND EMPLOYERS.

At Christchurch on Saturday night tho Locomotivc Enginedrivers', Firemen's, and Clcaners| Union held a banquet, which was attended by some of the local. members of Parliament. During tho evening some speeches were made which we think are sufficiently interesting' and significant to require the attention of the public outside Christchurch, sinco they illustrate some of the worst evils of New Zealand politics. Ono of the men, in proposing "The Government and .PiLrHamnnt,.!'. Rairl that t.hnpn nrnsnnfc

knew that their masters were the members of Parliament: "they arc practically our ' employers. Tho Minister for Railways is appointed by tHe members of Parliament, and they have a* very great say in deciding who shall be general manager and who shall ba the chief mechanical engineer. The man who is your employer in the railway service is the man you support on election day, and it is a very happy thing to know that yon have the electing of your own employer." Tho speaker went on to broaden his hint to those members of Parliament who were present, by complaining that the pre.sent Government has not been giving tho railway employees Very much: "I don't remember one plum during the past three years." . lieading such a statement as that we have italicised, and remembering the statement by Mr. Yeitch, the President of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants in July of 1909, to tho effect that the Society, could command the Government, we arc filled with astonishment that there should still romain anybody willing to defend the political control of the railways and the public services. Messrs. Ell, M.P., and . Witty, M.P., who were present, are not so dull that they could not see, what everybody else will of course _ see quite plainly, that the Union's spokesman was announcing that the members of the Union! should vote at election time for the man who will undertake to get the most for them. •In taking up this stand, tho Union is doing" a very natural thing, and wc do not blame it for. every possible legal means of obtaining all it can for its members. But it is manifest that the public interest must suffer when large bodies of State employees—and ■ Mr. Millar says that over 130,000 persons are directly dipendent upon the Statecan utilise their votes to send to Parliament special delegates whose first interest is not the national interest, but the interest of the masters who can make or mar them politically, and whoso object is, not the defence of economy- in administration, but the exercise of lavishness in public expenditure on behalf :of . their clients. As 'to'the: facts 'of the pay of railwaymen, we believe-that . the men are upon the whole anything but overpaid: There: are too many men employed, but that is quite another matter. We hold also that the rank and file of the service are very badly treated when regard is had for. the way in which some of the high officers are : pampered <beyond. their deserts. Few railway men really believe that they would lose by a change of Government or by the establishment; of Commissioner management; many of them must feel that in eithef caso they would .be better off.

1 This,-however,'is by the 1 way. The point to be noted is tho evil of a system . 'which breeds members of Parliament who can thus, bo- infiu-' cnced'b.y State-employees. Messrs. Ell and Witty are members of this kind.' Eager, to defend tRe Government and himself, Mr. Ell said the railways had lost ,£200,000 a year, and he added that "the faet that the railways were not. paying had been seized upon by the Conservative press and by Conservative members -as- a ground of attack on the Minister, who had to make the railways pay before he could increase the post of wording them." In his anxiety to kowtow to the Uiiion, this member was prepared to ...hand over to "the Conservative press" all the credit for having forced the Minister, to try and improve his administration. Could abjectness go further t Mr. Witty, a politician of the same type as Mr. Ell—a type 'that we hope will soon be rooted out of Parliament—also strove to defend the Government, and also referred to "the attacks of the Opposition." It is 'not often that a single banquet can illustrate so vividly tho baleful results of Ministerial autocracy in a country in which the State is the employer of an extremely' large : sec-' tion of the community.