A HARSH POLICY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 827, 22 November 1929, Page 8

A HARSH POLICY

Till*, Post and Telegraph Department has chosen a peculiarly unfortunate time to discharge the sixteen members of its casual staff who, as reported yesterday, have received notices of dismissal from the service. Even although there are welcome signs that more work is now available throughout the country, it is extremely unlikely that all the men discharged will be able to secure employment again before Christmas. The so-called

“festive season” as it concerns these men and their dependants is thus made to assume a bleak and sinister aspect. Their wage when working is but £3 19s 9d a week, and no one is foolish enough to suppose that such a wage gives any margin for contingencies. Tn the circumstances it seems reasonable that the departmental policy responsible for the dismissal of these men should be fully explained to the public.

City electorates will be. interested to hear what the Hon. -J. B. Donald. Postmaster-General, has to say upon the subject. It is not unlikely that the policy adopted in Auckland is being duplicated in other centres. The men dismissed here will not be the only ones affected, and the total throughout the Dominion may thus reach a fairly high figure. If Mr. Donald supports the policy as part of ti general programme of curtailments, a remarkable paradox will be disclosed. It will be evident that the Government is dismissing men in one direction while engaged, in another, in the biggest unemployment relief scheme ever attempted in New Zealand; it is prepared to countenance the curious habit of doing one tiling with the left hand and another with the right. If Mr. Donald does not support the dismissals it should be plainly intimated to the responsible executives that they may not with impunity turn whole groups of men on to the unemployment market without very good and sufficient cause.

Any suggestion that the Government endorses the policy of staff curtailments is very unlikely to be well received just now, when the memory of the unprecedented grant of a Parliamentary bonus by members to themselves is still fresh in the public mind. Some, at least, of the Auckland members who will benefit by this bonus are men of considerable means. It is difficult to see how they ean accept the bonus without scruple or, as Mr. \V. E. Parry so eloquently put it. “without their hands shaking,” when poorly-paid Government employees in their own city are being tlirust out of employment on the eve of the season at which, in a Utopian world, goodwill and plenty would be shared by all.