The Press Monday, July 14, 1930. Rationing Railway Work.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19979, 14 July 1930, Page 10

The Press Monday, July 14, 1930. Rationing Railway Work.

Every man and woman in the Dominion Trill find it disagreeable to blame the Minister for Railways, Mr Veitch, for his yielding reception of the deputation of dismissed railwaymen who waited on him on Friday. In searching for an escape from a very unpleasant duty Mr Veitch did what it is natural to do; but he and the people whose interests are in his hands, the people of New Zealand, must remember that the Railway Department is in serious difficulties, that a Minister for Railways can afford to consider only how he is to lessen and overcome them, and that the last thing he is free to do is to consider the railways as a means of finding men work or keeping them in work. If Mr Veitch really knows —and he ought to know —that it is a fact that " the Department has " been employing too many men in its "workshops," and if it is really "obvious that the workshops cannot "employ for full time all those at "present on the pay-roll/' then he must know that there can be no just or wise or even expedient alternative to reducing the number to the efficient minimum. Instead of declaring this plainly, and allowing himself only the single concession he could safely make, that he would not dismiss one man more than necessary, Mr Veitch himself proposed the alternative of ■ " rationing" work, retaining the men under notice at the expense of all employees, who would be asked to give a week's service free. This is not a fair scheme, but unfair; not economical, but wasteful. It can never be fair to call on indispensable workers to pay for superfluous ones; and the railways will never pay their way if for any reason ■ at all, however appealing to soft hearts, they are permitted to be overstaffed. It is a little surprising, also, | that the Minister should suggest and I even be eager to adopt a plan which the Railway Commission may have the x strongest reasons for condemning. Indeed, the action already taken and Mr Veitch's own statement leave very little room, if any, for doubt about it. The possibility of defeating the purposes for which the Commission was set up ought to have been a powerful deterrent to Mr Veitch's impulsive tenderness. But the Minister was of course not alone in flinching from the facts and tending to think of the " serious " ness" of the position in terms of employment and dismissals. It is a j serious and sad thing, certainly, that men should have to be turned off. The economic position of the railways, however, is a still more serious thing; but the speakers in the deputation did not help the Minister to regard this. The general secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants spoke rhetorically of "a case of life or " death,' 7 declared (not quite consistently) that the "seriousness of the " position could hardly be exaggerated," enumerated about 400 dismissals, which.are oausing gravest appre"hension" throughout the Dominion, and concluded that "there was some- " thing wrong somewhere" when men of long service were suddenly put off. But "if the Minister for Finance "granted the necessary money, it "would not be necessary to dispense " with the men's services." The general secretary of the Railway Tradesmen's Association described the Department's action as "unprecedented" and was "concerned" that it should be necessary at all. It is unpleasant to have to say it, but these are thoroughly irrational opinions, which express a disturbing want of regard for the facts of the situation and an equally disturbing notion of what it is right and wrong for the Department to do. In simple words, they mean that the Department has never troubled about efficiency before, because there was enough money to go round, and that if more money were poured in, everybody could go on working. If the Minister or the Government even begins to accept these disastrous views, there will be an end of all hope of improvement in the financial position of the railways, and at the same time the solution of the unemployment problem will be postponed instead of accelerated. Unfortunately, neither the Minister nor the Government appears to be proof against their insidious influence.