NEW SOCIAL SECURITY, DEPARTMENT

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 149, 20 March 1939, Page 10

NEW SOCIAL SECURITY, DEPARTMENT

Post And Telegraph Men Complain

EXECUTIVE POSITIONS DENIED THEM Dominion Special Service. AUCKLAND, March 19. In the permanent staffing of the newly-created social security department, there is an impression among public servants that the claims of members of the Post and Telegraph Department, who for some years have been attached to the employment branch of the Labour Department, have been overlooked. With the merging of most of the employment branch into the Social Security Department, it is assumed that most of the post and telegraph officers will be transferred back to their parent department. When the employment branch was created some eight or nine years ago, officers were loaned for the purpose by the Post and Telegraph Department. Most of these men filled executive positions in the branch, the bulk of the routine work being done by temporary clerks recruited from the ranks of the unemployed. It is .possible that 150 men are employed in the Auckland office, apart from the placement Service, and there are branches over the province, so that the executives have been carrying large responsibilities iu controlling the activities of organization. When it was proposed to merge the Pensions Department and the employment branch to form the basis of the Social Security Department, applications for executive positions in the new department were Invited throughout the Public Service. Post aud telegraph officers with the employment branch are known to have made application for various positions, but, so far as can be learned, none has been granted to a post and telegraph man. Certainly they have gained none of the imortant positions that will embrace the duties that they have been performing for years. The situation is reported to have caused considerable discontent. Some of the temporary clerks have also been carrying out executive duties, but they, also, are denied permanent appointments in the new department, and .presumably will lie relegated to routine work.

The neglect of the post and telegraph officers iu the new staff appointments is assumed to be based on the fact that, when they entered their department, they did not pass nor were they required to pass, public service entrance examinations. The Post and Telegraph Department recruits on a different principle from other departments, taking men into the clerical branches who were telegraph messengers. Post and telegraph men in the employment branch are said to be ignorant of the intentions regarding them. They expect to be transferred back to duty with the Post and Telegraph Department, perhaps after instructing the new appointees in their duties. Technically speaking, they may not have lost seniority during their absence from the Post and Telegraph Department, but it is pointed out on their behalf that they would go back to duties with which they are now unfamiliar and inferior in responsibility to their present positions. It is felt that the loss of touch over eight or nine years with post and telegraph duties is a handicap that must retard their further advancement.