RAILWAY STAFFING

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 210, 24 November 1927, Page 20

RAILWAY STAFFING

REGULATIONS FOR PROMOTION CLAUSES IN AMENDMENT (THE SUN’S Parliamentary Reporter) WELLINGTON, Wednesday. By the operation of the Railways Amendment Bill opportunity equal with those provided in other departments will be given for the promotion of the young men - in the railways service. The Prime Minister, who is Minister of Railways, explains that the Bill really enacts on Statute what is in regulation at the present time, although a few clauses are inserted as new provisions for the better running of the service. The recommendations of the Regrading Committee, which recently completed its investigation into the positions in the service with a view to securing uniformity with other departments ,in the question of staffs, are embodied largely in the Bill. The Minister said in the House to-day that the motive which prompted the establishment of this committee was the doubt as to whether men in the railway service were receiving salaries equivalent to those received by men holding similarly graded positions in other departments. It was wrong to assume that the Bill was going to allow a host of outsiders into the department, Mr. Coates said, for he was opposed to securing anyone from outside the service if a man could be got within the department itself. There never had been a periodical reclassification in the railways, and this Bill was enacting provisions to make such a course effective. In the common interests of the State and the department itself it was necessary that theone-man-one-job principle should operate. In reply to Sir Joseph Ward, Mr. J. S. Dickson, chairman of the Railways Committee, said there \yere 20 positions affected by the £765 class, which were excluded from the right of appeal.