SUPPLY STOPPED

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20077, 25 October 1939, Page 9

SUPPLY STOPPED

POST OFFICE UNIFORM STAFFS DUMBFOUNDED BLUE SUITS EXPECTED EXPENSE OF WORKERS (Pur Press Association.) AUCKLAND, this day. No more uniforms are to be supplied to officers of the Post and Telegraph Department until the end of the war and the staffs are expected to provide their own clothes, Preferably blue in colour. The situation is without precedent in the history of the department and its announcement in a memorandum received at Auckland has dumbfounded members of the various uniform branches.

About six weeks ago the customary annual requisitions for uniforms were sent to Wellington. To the surprise of many hundreds of postmen, chauffeurs, telegraph messengers arid linesmen, the stores manager attached to the Post and Telegraph Department sent memorandum to the Auckland chief post office stating that no further issues of uniforms would be made to any of the uniform staffs. It was pointed out that this decision would bear very heavily upon many of the junior men, especially messengers, some of whom received only .£6O a year ar.d upon postmen in suburban and country areas, whore heavy bags of mail have to be carried long r.Glances End clothes wear out quickly. Chauffeurs, 100, because of the nature of their work, would suffer. It is the intention of the Post and Telegraph Department Employees’ Association to take up the matter and make representations to the Government.