NO MORE UNIFORMS TO BE SUPPLIED

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22850, 25 October 1939, Page 8

NO MORE UNIFORMS TO BE SUPPLIED

Decision of Post And» Telegraph Department

MEN TO FIND OWN CLOTHES UNTIL END OF WAR

(FBESS ASSOCIATION TELEGRAM.)

AUCKLAND, October 24. No more uniforms are to be supplied to officers of the Post and Telegraph Department until the end of the war, and staffs are expected to provide their own clothing, preferably blue in colour. The situation is without precedent in the history of the department, and its announcement in a memorandum received at Auckland has dumbfounded members of the various uniform branches. About six weeks ago the customary annual requisitions for uniforms were sent to Wellington. To the surprise of the many hundreds of postmen, chauffeurs, telegraph messengers, and linesmen, the stores manager attached to the Post and Telegraph Department sent a memorandum to the Auckland Chief Post Office stating that no further issues of uniforms would be made to any uniform staffs. It was pointed out that this decision would bear very heavily upon many of the junior men, especially messengers, some of whom received only •£ 60 a year, and on postmen in suburban and country areas-, where heavy bags of mail had t» be carried long distances, and clothes wore out quickly. Chauffeurs, too, because of the nature of their work, would suffer. It is the intention of the Post and Telegraph Employees’ Association to take up the matter and make representations to the Government.