COST OF LIVING BONUS

Hokitika Guardian, 8 May 1923, Page 2

COST OF LIVING BONUS

REPLY TO PRIME MINISTER. [by TELEGRAPH PER PRESS ASSOCIATION.] CHRISTCHURCH, May 7. At a meeting of the Canterbury Labour Members of Parliament, _ Messrs Howard, Sullivan, Armstrong and McCombs being present, it was decided to issue a reply to the Prime Minister’s latest pronouncement regarding tho reduction in the cost-of-living bonus to civil servants. This reply states, inter alia, that the Prime Minister had made many attempts to justify what the Government had done in reducing the incomes of the public servants, but the Prime Minister’s propaganda would not convince public servants’ associations, because they knew the facts. The propaganda was for the elector who was unacquainted with the real facts. In June, 1920, an agreement was arrived at and a promise was made by the Prime Minister that for every 10 per cent increase in the cost of living or ten per rent decrease, there was to lie a re-adjustment of bonus. In 1921. when there had boon a considerable increase in the cost of living, the Prime Minister repudiated his undertaking, and said there was “no agreement as to a readjustment.” Mr Millar, of the Public Service ..Association, Mr McCombs, of the P. and T. Association, and Mr Mack, of the A.S.R.S., all emphatically assert that such a promise had been made. Mr Massey’s failure to fulfil his promise to increase the (bonuses in proportion to the increase in the cost of living and the injustice of calculating the cost of living percentages on the “food groups only, have reduced the standard cf living of public servants of tho Dominion a ell behind the 1914' standard.