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Joint Advisory System. The year under review saw the introduction in the Department of a scheme of staff consultation known as the Joint Advisory System. The scheme, which is based on, but not altogether identical with, the Whitley Councils of the British Post Office, provides for a series of committees, through the agency of which the staff is afforded the opportunity of being more actively associated with the management of the Department. The main committee, which is termed the Joint Advisory Council, is comprised of twelve members, six, representing the Department, being appointed by the Director-General, and the remaining six, representing the Service organization, by the Dominion Executive of the Post and Telegraph Employees' Association and Officers' Guild. District Advisory Committees have been set up at each Chief Post-office in the Dominion and at certain other offices. In association with District Committees there are Branch Advisory Committees representing one or more branches at each office, the number being determined largely by the status of the office. The functions of the Joint Advisory Council are to consider any matters referred to it and to make recommendations to the Department where thought necessary or desirable. The District Advisory Committees and the Branch Advisory Committees are in the nature of subsidiary organizations. Their object is to deal with matters having a more or less local application. They also consider any proposals and suggestions brought before them, and, where necessary, refer to the next higher committee any matters that may be deemed to have a wider application. The main object of the Joint Advisory System is to secure, in matters affecting the efficient working of the Department and the welfare of its employees, the greatest measure of co-operation between the Administration and the executive officers of the Department on the one hand and the general body of the staff on the other. At the same time it aims at pooling the experience of officers and harmonizing different points of view concerning conditions of service generally. The Administration is confident that the staff generally will welcome the introduction of the scheme, which will provide the means whereby the ideas of all can be associated and utilized to their maximum value to the ultimate benefit of the Service as a whole. Co-ordination op Staffs of Clerical Branches at Chief Post-offices and Engineers' Offices. A change in the staffing arrangements of the Clerical Branches at a number of the more important Chief Post-offices was introduced during the year by the appointment at each of these offices of an officer with the designation of Chief Clerk. The appointments were made with the dual object of amalgamating the clerical staffs of the Chief Postmaster's Office and Telegraph Engineer's Office and of co-ordinating the work performed in these branches. Under the new system facilities will exist which will enable the members of both clerical staffs to acquire a knowledge of the work of the combined branches. The arrangement should prove beneficial both to the Department and to the officers themselves. At the four main centres there are difficulties in the way of bringing about an amalgamation of the two branches in question, and it is not proposed to take any action in this respect in the meantime at least. Merger of Post and Telegraph Employees' Association and Post and Telegraph Officers' Guild. As from the Ist June, the Post and Telegraph Employees' Association and the Post and Telegraph Officers' Guild merged in one organization under the title of " The Post and Telegraph Employees' Association and Officers' Guild, Incorporated." NATIONAL SAVINGS MOVEMENT: POST OFFICE PARTICIPATION. The Post Office has taken a leading part in the National Savings Movement which was inaugurated by Government during the year, the bulk of the organizing and detailed work of the scheme having been entrusted to the Department. Selected departmental officers were appointed as organizers at the more important centres and allotted the task of organizing on a national scale the full support of all sections of the community. The method adopted was to establish personal contact with the management of business firms with the object of securing their interest in the scheme and, with their co-operation, of setting up savings groups amongst the employees. An employee or other representative of each establishment acts as a group collector and undertakes the regular collection and payment to the Post Office of the sums collected. The scheme provides the investor with an avenue whereby he is enabled to contribute to the Dominion's war effort, and at the same time to lay aside for himself a sum of money to be used when conditions return to normal. It is pleasing to record that the great majority of the Department's employees possess National Savings Accounts. POST OFFICE PATRIOTIC FUND. Contributions from the Post Office Patriotic Fund paid to the National and Provincial Patriotic Funds from the time of establishment of the Post Office Fund (March, 1940) to the 31st March, 1941, were as follows: To National Fund, £4,000; to Provincial Funds, £2,000.

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