RAILWAY WORKSHOPS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 October 1941, Page 6

RAILWAY WORKSHOPS

WAR AND NATIONAL SERVICE DEPARTMENTAL ATTITUDE. MISLEADING STATEMENTS ALLEGED. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, October 11. The statement embodied in a Press Association message from. Dunedin with reference to a resolution of the Hillside workers regarding the departmental attitude to employees in connection with . ..military and national service was' the subject of comment by Mr E. Casey, General Manager of Railways, who describes the statements as misleading and incorrect. No action of any kind was taken by the Railways Department to hinder or prevent the tinsmith referred to from joining the armed forces, nor was an appeal lodged. With reference to a married casual tinsmith referred to as having been dismissed the position is that the Director of National Service requested this department to make available for employment in a private firm the services of a tinsmith who was required there on more essential work than he was carrying out at Hillside. Action was taken accordingly. A casual employee who had the least service was selected and given a week’s notice and asked to report to the National Service Department at Dunedin for the purpose of taking up further employment. No distinction, he said, is made between men in the same calling in regard to appeals for military service, merely because one iis a casual and the other a permanent employee.