STATE ACTIVITIES AND MANPOWER

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 285, 1 September 1942, Page 4

STATE ACTIVITIES AND MANPOWER

Figures given by the Public Service Commissioner in his report on the acuteness of the wartime staffing problem show that the departments under his control have contributed very substantially to the country’s armed forces. A total of 6677 employees are—or have been—in uniform, out of some 14,000 men employed by this group of departments in September, 1939. Thus the reduction m male staff has been one of nearly 50 per cent., and this has been only partly compensated for by the engagement for wartime duty of 3400 women. The remaining gap between the amount of work to be done and the staff available to do it has been bridged by overtime, and what the Commissioner describes as a “pitiless scrutiny” of many forms of work, hitherto regarded as indispensable but now either discarded or postponed. ‘ . The Commissioner’s task is to provide and control the machinery which carries out the work allotted to certain State departments. He does not make duties, but is responsible for having them, adequately performed; therefore his anxiety concerning the immediate future, viewed in the light of the continuing drain of personnel for military service, is to be appreciated. At the same time many citizens will also look upon his report z as a revealing—and disturbing -disclosure of the inroads made into this Dominion’s manpower and womanpower during recent years by the expansion of the Public Service to cope with State activities. Since 1935 the staff, temporary as well as permanent, which the Commissioner has been obliged to'assemble to handle the tasks allotted to his departments has more than doubled. In .1935 its total was 9782. Last year it was 22,397. It must be borne in mind that this is only a part indeed only a fraction—of New Zealand’s State-paid civil army. The Public Service Commissioner’s departments do not include Post and. Telegraph Department employees (to the number of 13,372), Railways Department employees (to a total of 24,500), or a Police Force of some 1500. These are 1941 figures and include, of course, a large number of men and women at present on essential war work, or actually serving in the Forces. Nevertheless the increase in. the statfing of the Commissioner’s departments alone tells a significant story to the economist and the taxpayer, and. to the whole of a country which is struggling to make ends meet in the rock-bottom essentials of its industrial manpower requirements. Today we are engaged.in a life-and-death struggle, yet remain saddled with the Public Service Commissioner’s need to retain at. least the minimum number of persons necessary to keep his machinery moving. No doubt it is. true, as he says, that his scrutiny of many forms of work has been ‘ pitiless. The people, however, will recognize that this applies to departmental methods of approaching tasks set by the Government not to. the tasks 4 themselves. The Commissioner can go only so far in adjustments, prunings and staffing expedients. Further and substantial relief to him, and to the country, would have to come in the form of an equally pitiless scrutiny of the State’s non-essential undertakings.