THE PUBLIC SERVICE

Hokitika Guardian, 2 April 1931, Page 2

THE PUBLIC SERVICE

(Christchurch "Press.”) According to the Dominion Executive ot the Post and Telegraph Employees’ Association, the fight against the salary cuts Ims lias “just only begun.” 1 The Association has assets >vorth £17,000 its members have votes, and (they are urged pot to forget) they will have an opportunity in December of slncing wiiiit they think of the men responsible for their sorrows. In tin.- meantime they have passed a 'resolution that ".•in sGompt lie made ultimately to hnv- .. '-ys„t'ni instituted whereby tin- .h i iiniiiaiion ot Public Service salaries and conlimns should lie removed from the mlitical arena.” What the Associaion means apparently is that the Pub.e Service should he not merely the irivileged hotly it is already, hut liould be absolutely protected against the .-misfortunes that affect other icople. Parliament lias little more to

lo with it now—in the sense in which Is resolution must he meant —than it ms to do with the “salaries and conditions” of any other group of emI’oyees in the country. It votes me noney necessary to pay the .salaries, nit it does not- snv, or attempt to say, iow the vote shall be spent. Its votes are generous, in themselves and in relation to the services rendered, and it is extraordinarily' liberal in the matter of “conditions.”

If it is to exercise no control at nil over silaries and conditions it will have to do precisely what the Association asks, and make the rest of the community pay. And as for “mixing itself up with polities” in the meantime, what this means of course is that the Association should threaten members of Parliament, directly and indirectly, and stampede them if it. can. Already, by impudent threats and disgraceful bribes, the Public Service has made Parliament spend fifteen thousand pounds for doing nothing, and )t insists) that this waste should go on in defence of its present pay and privileges Although tfiere ic hardly a business man in the country who has not had Ids income reduced by a third ; hardly a farmer who has not lost fifty per cent, or more; hardly a doctor, lawyer, accountant, or artisan whoso economic position has not been interferred with to an extent quite unknown in the Public Service; and hardly a labourer who has not boon threatened with short time o' the complete loss of employment. ”nrlinment must not take ten per cent, off the earnings of public servants or it will pay for its rasnness in Deco nber. That is political brigandage of the most hare-faced kind, and if Par liament submits to it nothing that the highwayman of the Public Service can do in December will matter, or approach what it deserves.