CLERICAL WORKERS' DEMANDS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 207, 2 September 1936, Page 6

CLERICAL WORKERS' DEMANDS.

Who is responsible for the demands of the Auckland Clerical and Office Staff Employees' Union? Certainly not one per cent of those most directly concerned. Drastic changes are disturbing. Many competent girls have been dismissed lately because employers would not or could not pay the minimum of £2. Now many are to receive £4 10/. Length of service is to be the main qualification for salary increases. Yet my experience is that you could not make competent stenographers or clerks out of some girls in 20 years, while some are worth more in three years than many men with 30 years' experience. There is'another point which must be watched, too, and that is the barrier which is being' erected against anyone changing his or her occupation after 21. Hundreds of Auckland's best stenographers started after they were 21. Who, however, will start them, untried, at a minimum of £3 5/? I welcome a much-needed improvement in the conditions of the general commercial office employee. It will make for increased efficiency, but do not let us bo stampeded into a hopelessly impractical award. RONALD CORSON.

I sincerely liope the Auckland Clerical and Office Staff Employees' Industrial Union of Workers will not get far with their claims, as such conditions are likely to have a boomerang effect on many employees in offices. I am a stenographer in a.smallish office, just over 20 years of age, a quick* and neat worker, but rather handicapped by not having been long in New Zealand and not knowing much of its geography or fully understanding its outlook. I am paid 42/G for a 38-liour week, or just under half what the union demands. My present employer is fully satisfied with my work at that figure, but he certainly cannot afford to pay more for ray services and will be obliged to replace me by a younger employee if the claims of the union are acceded to. The union's proposals are likely to prove harsh in their effects on us not so young office workers who are well treated and happy in our work, and who have been trained for (and have given all our working lives so far to) this kind of employment, but who cannot expect to be retained if the union's claims are acceded to. Some of the other demands of the union also seem to me preposterous. For instance, the suggestion that no employer shall require any employee to do any work for him at the employer's home seems to be quite unreasonable. There are quite a -proportion of employers who are periodically confined to their homes through ill-health-and whose business must absolutely cease unless employees are allowed to visit the employer at his. home and receive instructions. I sincerely hope the union will withdraw its demands in favour of more moderate ones within the bounds _ of practicability. I should find it hard to believe a majority of the clerical workers of Auckland are behind, these preposterous demands. <