POST AND TELEGRAPH ASSOCIATION.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17295, 5 November 1921, Page 12

POST AND TELEGRAPH ASSOCIATION.

TO THE EDITOR OF "THE PMSS. M Bir,—As there -happened to be another viewpoint to the one you adopt in your leading article of October 31st, I would be glad if you could allow me the space "to place it before your readers. As conditions are fixed at the moment, the Post and Telegraph employeo ia very much and be j has good reason to be, despite tout assertion that yon cannot see that he ' has any ground for complaint. Surely, if I made an advertising agreement with you, and later, in the interests , of bqt customer*, aiked you to mows

only a portion of what the agreement stipulated, you would seek redress. Yet, in effect, this is what the P.M»G. claims the right to do with the Post and Telegraph salary. You would have the advantage of a legal remedy to right your wrong, but, unhappily, the Post and Telegraph employee has no legal course open to him —having been refused a tribunal to that end. Moreover, you would expect me to come to you and confer with you on the subject, but ■, evidently, as you oannot Bee that Post and Telegraph 'officers have any ground for complaint, you do not expect us to have an equality of consideration, in that direction. In this I submit you are opposing toe spirit of arbitration and conciliation, which has been the rule of this country for a quarter of a century, and you are overlooking the system of Whitley Councils and profit-sharing which have been brought into effeotin other British countries. .As to the balance-sheet of the Department on March 31st last, ypu are well aware that the Department had to carry tho "cost of living" bonus for twelve months, while it only had the benefit of the revenue from the. increased rates for seven months. A twelve months balance-sheet as on September 30th last, would tell a different tale to the one you review, and, while the revenue and expenditure (plus interest on capital cost) might not exactly balance, they would be much closer together than you apparently anticipate. If full consideration is given the Department for the many mail and. telephone services at present maintained in the interests of the back-blocks' settlers, which do not pay, and which have no reasonable nope of paying, the revenue and expenditure items would be quite reconciled. At any rate such services affect the commercial balance-sheet very materially, and it is hardly fair to charge the whole loss to the P. and T. balancesheet, seeing that the Department is only doing something, on. behalf of the community, to make life in. tho outlying districts moro bearable. No one questions the indirect value of such services, but it seems pretty hard that the Post Office employee should have his wages attacked because (partly) of the money loss on these uncommercial undertakings. I have, again to submit that there is a broad enough principle involved in tho right of any employee to some say in fixing his salary and working conditions to warrant all that the A. and P. Association is doing at tho present moment. His homo life is threatened. As he is efficient (if one is to believe the many nice thincs said in this connexion), and as lie is just as willing as he always has been to do his utmost to expedite official business, he is entitled to sympathy and sunport rather than the rebuff you give him. In conclusion, may I say that there was evidently a double significance in the attendance of Messrs Holland, Fraser, and Howard, M.P.'s. Nt the annual smoke concert in Wellington. It lies in this: The other M.P.'s were invited but stayed away.—Yours, etc., S. E. COMBS, Secretary.