“MEETING LABOUR”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 916, 8 March 1930, Page 5

“MEETING LABOUR”

REVISION OF POSTAL SALARIES VIEWS OF ASSOCIATION "The regrading is very welcome, but unfortunately it will not benefit the man who is already on a minimum salary of £240 a year." This is the opinion of an official of the Post and Telegraph Officers’ Association in discussing the decision of the Prime Minister, Sir Joseph Ward, to amend the salary schedule of the general division of the Post and Telegraph Department, in order that employees may reach the maximum salary at an earlier age. It is stated that it appears the Prime Minister’s decision has been made in pursuance of a promise given to the Labour Party during a debate in the House of Representatives early in November last upon a no-confidence motion. The Labour motion advocated a 5 per cent, increase in the Public Service schedule scales up to £295 a year, including the stationary wages of railway servants and others It also proposed a minimum adult wage for public servants, and a supertax on incomes of £I.OOO and over to meet the extra cost. In the course of the debate, the Minister of Lands, the Hon. G. W. Forbes stated —"The Prime Minister has authorised me to say that if the revenue returns exceed the Estimates this year, and we show a surplus at the end of the year, he will try in some way to meet the request of the service, and particularly to improve the position of the lower grade men. Any increase will he from April 1, that is, after we have got over the prosont year. I think that is as far as any Minister of Finance can go.” The present decision, according to officials of the Post and Telegraph Officers’ Association, was not due to any recent action on the association’s part. The claim of the general division for more steeply graded salary increases had been put forward by the association for a number of years, and the question had been dealt with explicitly in a statement issued by the association last October, immediately after the Prime Minister had declined to restore the post-war salary cuts. The passage in the statement read: “Then there is the case of male adults in the general division, with ages from 21 to 23 years, being paid salaries varying from £96 to £122 a >ear. This position is peculiar to the Post and Telegraph Department. In the Railway Department officers belong-

ing to the second division, which corresponds to the general division in the Post and Telegraph Department, are paid a wage aggregating £209 a year on reaching adult age, as against some £96 in the Post and Telegraph Department. “In the general division, which comprises postmen, postal messengers, exchange clerks, telegraph linesmen, storemen, etc., the maximum salary is £240 a year. This salary can only be obtained under normal circumstances after an officer has served ten years, exclusive of any telegraph messenger service.”