PUBLIC SERVICE WAGES

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25677, 14 December 1948, Page 3

PUBLIC SERVICE WAGES

REPLY TO MINISTER’S STATEMENT .<As a member of the Cabinet subcommittee responsible for throwing the question of public servants’ wages into the political arena, Mr NorriL, ey er now seeks to slide out from imder by attacking leaders of the public services’ organisations. If there was any leading up the garden path done, the Cabinet sub-committee did this to the leaders of the organisations concerned when they played a stalling game to gain time and rush the Tribunal Act through Parliament so that the responsibility of giving any decision on the recommendations of the margins and anomalies committee could be avoided by the Governstatement was made yesterday hr Mr A. H. Strong, secretary-organ-jser for the Canterbury section of the public Service Association, when replying to a statement made by the Minister of Industries and Commerce (Mr A. H. Nordmeyer) at Port Chalmers, that public servants had been led up the garden path by their own leaders. Mr Strong said that there had been discussions on the unsatisfactory features of the Tribunal Bill, but there had been no negotiation on the submission cf the present dispute to the tribunal. His association had never denied that it wanted a satisfactory tribunal, but it had firmly intimated that, having devoted milch time in the last 11 months to the stating of a case to the margins and anomalies committee and having succeeded, with other State employees’ organisations in persuading the committee to make a recommendation to the Government ft was not now prepared to begin all over again to state the same case to a tribunal that would be hampered from the outset by a negative decision of the Government.

“Mr Nordmeyer states that mass meetings of public servants and talk of stop-work meetings would not have the slightest effect on the Government's decision, but he failed to tell his audience that it was persistent and consistent negotiations that persuaded the Government to alter very materially the original draft of the bill Mr Nordmeyer seeks of course to create confusion. He knows full well that the service organisations of which the Public Service Association is a party, are concerned with two issues; first, a satisfactory settlement on the recommendations of the margins and anomalies committee; and second, the functioning of the Public Services Tribunal. J If any question of inconsistency is claimed, surely this must lie at the door of the Government which, having agreed to the setting up of the margins committee, and allowing it to work for over eight months, gave very little consideration to the recommendations and then sought to delay matters further by passing the onus of a decision on to the tribunal.

“The leaders of the service organisations, and I can speak particularly for the leaders of the Public Service Association, hold the complete confidence of their members, and any effort by Mr Nordmeyer to undermine that confidence will not have the slightest effect and will in no way deter the association from its ultimate aims on behalf of . its membership.’’