FRENCH POSTAL AFFAIRS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3144, 23 March 1909, Page 4

FRENCH POSTAL AFFAIRS.

The strike of the postal employees calls new attention to what has been described as the most unpopular and best abused of all French Government departments. Only a short time back, M. Noulena, in presenting a report to the Chamber of Deputies, attacked the whole system with a remarkable fervour and freedom. He

pictured the postal service of France as a thing weighted and fettered by routine; and declared that the department made quite insufficient provision for the public nee-ds, neglected to train its staff, and, in general, stoud distinguished only by determined eco'iomy, arid an aversion tD any sort of financial risks. Germany has a post office to every 1,152 in- } habitants, Great Britain one for 1,842, but Francs contents itself with one for 3,152 people. If all the employees under the British PostmasterGeneral went out on strike, he would be confronted by a rebellious crowd of 154,351 male an 41,081 female subordinates; but the French department works along at the best of times with a staff of only 100,588, including 5,342 women. But M. . Noulens attributes the lack of celerity not so much to understaffing as to the want of specialisation. The principle is that any post office servant is competent to rule in any branch. A clerk who has spent ten years sorting letters, is promoted, to find himself chief clerk in a telegraph or telephone office, and superintending a staff of operators on instruments which he knows nothing whatever about. A fifteen years spell of checking savings bank figures may lead suddenly to an appointment as clerk of the works, to overlook the erection of telegraph and telephone poles. "A young telegraph messenger is promoted to inspect wires carried over roofs and report on defects. Instead of risking his neck by climbing on house-tops, he waits till one of the workmen on the electrical staff is available. The subscriber whose telephone is out of order also waits, but he is accustomed to it." Economy also prevails in salaries. Clerks receive from sixty to a hundred and twenty pounds a year; women clerks from forty-four pounds to eightyeight ; and provincial directors, each with entire charge of postal affairs in one of the eighty-six departments in France receive only from £240 to £4OO. Perhaps some further reductions loomed amongst those "oppressive and tyrannical regulations" said to have provoked the strike.