"ITS OWN MEDICINE."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 226, 23 September 1936, Page 10

"ITS OWN MEDICINE."

GOVERNMENT AND OVERTIME. ' '. ! i CIVIL SERVANTS' PAY. (By Telegraph.—Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, Tuesday. . Declaring that the Government should be prepared to take its own medicine, Mr. S. G. Holland (National, Christchurch North) alleged during the debate on the Public Works Statement in the House of Representatives to-night that tlia Government was going to pay its own employees three-quarters of the ordinary rate of pay-when they worked overtime, whereas such men in private employment must be paid at the rate of time and a half.

"It seems to me," he added, "that this is a kind of Irishman's rise. Let us carry the discussion a little further. Let us take a man in private employ drawing £470 a year for a 40-hour week. That is, 4/8 an hour. The rate of overtime for that worker would in private employ be 7/ an hour. We find that the Government is going to pay sucli a man exactly half what it demands that the private employer shall pay. It Is going to pay hini 3/6 an hour."

Mr. Holland said he cxpccted aGovernment which asked the people to take its medicine, actually to take its own medicine. To do so in this case would mean doubling the overtime rates for civil servants.