SALARY AND SERVICE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4869, 24 August 1925, Page 4

SALARY AND SERVICE.

WHAT JIB. GOODFELLOW IS PAID. EXPLANATION OF POSITION. With buclpic bluntness a shareholder at the annual meeting of the dried milk suppliers to the Waharoa factory (N.Z.C.D.C., Ltd.) held on Wednesday last asked what salary the managing, director was getting. Was it £lOOO, £2OOO, or £3o'oo 1 As a shareholder he had a right to know. Mr Goodfellow, after commenting that he had given full service for any remuneration he had received from the company, left the question to Mr Dynes Fulton (chairman of directors) to reply to. specifically. Mr Fulton said the salary was £2500 a year at present. A few years ago it was £2OOO. The question had never been asked before, or it would have been answered promptly. The directorate had never considered that its managing director was getting too high a salary. Some considerable time ago Mr Goodfellow had intimated his desire to be relieved of a good deal of the work and responsibility placed upon him. Few people outside the directorate knew' the burden carried by Mr Goodfellow . during the slump; the strain was-terrific.. Later, when the business was on a good footing, Mr Goodfellow would have liked to have gone right Out of it, but did not want to do anything detrimnetal to the concern. Mr Goodfellow had suggested that Mr Sinclair be appointed general manager, while he (Mr Goodfellow) controlled the marketing and financing and the coal mine. He would have liked to have been general advisor to the company, at a very much reduced salary. The directors, however, realised that there was not a man in sight who could replace Mr Goodfellow. They agreed to the appointment of Mr Sinclair as manager, reducing Mr Goodfellow’s salary by £so'o a year on the dairy side of the business, Mr Goodfellow having placed himself entirely in the directors’ hands, stating that whatever they agreed upon would be acceptable to him. But on the resignation of Mr Sinclair Mr Goodfellow had to take up all the old duties again and carry on. A new manager had been advertised for, but the directors had not yet had time to go into the applications. The salary was very moderate for a company having a turnover of £5,000,000. Other companies with not half the turnover and a much less intricate business to run were paying their managing directors £5OOO a year. He would say, without fear of contradiction, that no man in the dairying industry was better qualified than Mr Goodfellow for the position he held. (Loud applause.) The questioner said he did not to the least begrudge Mr Goodfellow his salary; he had asked the question merely for information, for he did not think that one shareholder in ten knew what the salary-was. Mr Goodfellow said he had been 16 years in the business, and for 15 years he had been trying to get out of it, for it wajs very exacting and highly responsible. It left a man very little time for home life. It would be quite impossible for him to continue Indefinitely, for his medical advisers had repeatedly urged him to ease up. But he would not mind acting in an advisory capacity, attending to the marketing until the Control Board took over the selling. After that he would like to be relieved of some of his duties, even at a much smaller salary.

The meeting concluded with votes of thanks to the chairman (Mr Fulton) and Mr Goodfellow.