The Press Monday, April 17, 1922. The Government and the Postal Service.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17431, 17 April 1922, Page 6

The Press Monday, April 17, 1922. The Government and the Postal Service.

The Postniaster-General has informed the secretary of the Post and Telegraph Officers' Association that the Government will pay the expenses of the delegates which branches of the Association may send to Wellington to consider the position that has been created by the ballot decision in favour of linking up the Association with the Alliance of Labour. It is greatly to that the Government's undisguised anxiety that the Association should reconsider its decision, and the readiness of the Minister to fall in with the wishes of the Association's executive, will not be regarded by the " forward" members as a sign of weakness. They will be wise if .they conclude that the Government, conscious of the soundness of its position and of the firmness with which the public is supporting it, can easily afford to go to the utmost limits of accommodation. In the meantime those who have chargI ed themselves with the defence of the Association's decision, Messrs Combs and Mack, are not helping the public to sympathise with the projected handing over of the postal service to the Alliance of Labour. In a lengthy speech to the •Wellington branch of the Association on SVednesday, Mr Combs declared that the-postal officers voted "in. cold blood," after having had the. benefit of visits from officials who described "as carefully as possibje "the details and possibilities of what " they were asking the service to de- " cide." We can hardly believe this, because one most obvious possibility is the possibility of the Association being asked, or ordered, by the Alliance of Labour to call out its members in support of a general' or partial strike. As we say, we can hardly believe that a majority of the postal officers, on considering that possibility, decided that they would take the responsibility involved. If they did vote for affiliation and this amongst other consequences of it, they are manifestly unfit to remain in the service of the State. One does not entrust the keys and the custody of the" fortress except 'to.men who in no siroumstances will betray the town. The secretary of the Association then spent a great deal of lime in endeavouring, to defend the Alliance of LaTbour and in .pleading that the postal officers would control their own affairs. .'/■ The Alliance of Labour," he said, "could have no control over the Ser"vioe until the Service, by a three- " fifths majority, told! the Autance. to "go ahead;" This doe 3 not matter at d1...1f theAUianoe can never get a three-fifths majority in the Association, what can be-the use of affiliation? If the, Alliance can ever get that major- . ity, postal officers will be called out, and affiliation will have the. moat evil results. It must therefore be useless, or disastrous. What Ibit, exactly, ' that the advocates of affiliation are aiming atP Mr Combs made.'it perfectly clear, to bur mind, that the- aim is the bludgeoning of the Qdvernment. "It is the feeling in our ''minds," he said, ''that something is " wrong with the administration at the time crystallised it-?'- .«'. self into' the ballot' you' - carried so The'■' 'something wrong" wai the, Government's neglect to ensure 1 that the economio pressure upon the general public should he increased in order that the postal officers should enjoy as much economic and financial comfort as if there had been no war and no wreoking of the economic organisation of the world. "Itfd any"bne outside tne Service imagine," the secretary "that the Service " was not going to resent the position "it had been placed inP" The wonder' wasj he, gave his hearers to understand, that the Association had not broken out in revolt long ago. This kind of talk will leave the publio col-i, for'ljße public consists mainly of people who realise that no small part of their discomfort arises from the obligation that has been put upon them ,to\pay the greatly increased salaries of the armtyrof publio servants. And it is not difficult to realise the feelings of the' average citizen when he sees a section of these publio servants threatening 1 to call in the Alliance of Labour to chastise him.' For that is the only object Of the proposed affiliation. There can bono other object.