RAILWAY ENGINEERS.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 191, 13 August 1919, Page 15

RAILWAY ENGINEERS.

STAFT SHORTAGE ANTICTPATED F.ES 10 THFoDrGH. DISCXJNTEXT. The •" New Zealand Loco. Engineers' Journal" of August; 1 indicates a dit'ncultv ill returning to a full pre-war timetable ou the railways, quite apart from the present difficulty of lack of coal. A shortage of engineers and an unwilling i ness to work extended overtime to com- | pensatefor this shorta.se is the difficulty 1 that confront* the Department. That the manpower of the locomotive department is much below normal in spite of the return of hundreds of our men from the front is quite an open secret in the service tins trade journal editoriThe question often n=ked is. 'will the men in the service be called upon to work ;;n extraordinary amount ot overtime in order to instal pre-war services 1 The next query is. will the men work an abnormal amount of overtime without protest or will they decline to do so. seeing that no special effort has been made :o induce meu to remain in the service? We al! know that the Minister has been depending upon a wave of depression throughout N'eufr Zealand forcing those who resigned to seek Iheir old positions in the service. Certainly, the Minister has made no attempt to deal with the resignations from the locomotive department in an effective manner, and which were in hundre Is during the last few years, and they are still resigning. At the present time the outlook is in.ice 1 of the b'ackest description and everything points to a breakdown in the man power in the future and not in the coal power as at present. That there are few revruits coming forward for future engineers is well known, and the reason for such is the poor inducement ollered for such an important post. However, there is a general feeling amongst- the men that they are not going to suffer both ways—putting up with a lowering wage (and which was the reason of many resigning) and having to work an excessive amount of overtime at tiie cheapest overtime rates in New Zealand to carry on tiie service without these men, who took the lirst opportunity to get away from an underpaid job.