Public Service Wage Tribunal

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25678, 15 December 1948, Page 4

Public Service Wage Tribunal

While leaders of Public Service organisations were declaring that they would have nothing to do with the Government’s proposed wage tribunal, the Minister of Industries and Commerce told a Port Chalmers audience a few days ago, they were in fact “meeting with the Govern- “ ment to ensure that the bill was “in order they had been leading their membership “up the garden “ path ”. Mr Nordmeyer went a little too far. The president of the

Public Seryice Association, Mr J. P. Lewin, in a statement on December 3, said quite plainly that there had been communications between the association and the Government. The amendments to the bill had been based on proposals put before the Government in February; and these had been “ reiterated in “ writing and verbally during the “ last few days And “ verbally ” no doubt means as much as Mr Nordmeyer professed to be revealing to the misguided public servants. But Mr Nordmeyer’s mistake would have been no mistake at all, if he had been content to say simply that they have been led into fighting a very confused battle. The association has advocated a tribunal; on October 12 it demanded one, and heard from the president a sharp attack on the Margins and Anomalies Committee, whose recommendations (he said) were “ already out of date When Mr Nash announced the decision to set up a permanent tribunal—by which all questions that had been before the Margins and Anomalies Committee would be settled—the secretary of the organisation opposed it on the astonishing ground (among others) that the Government “ well knew ” that the tribunal was “ not desired by mos x of the “ [service] organisations Repeatedly, the Government’s proposal has been damned at service meetings because it “ masks the Government’s “ refusal to pay public servants the “ same rates as have been proved “to be ruling in industry The principle of equal pay has been endorsed by the Government and by the Public Service Commission. What the Government proposed to do was to pass to a tribunal (which had been asked for) the task of interpreting the evidence and applying the principle; and the tribunal’s decision was to be e: mandatory ” —Mr Nash’s word—and retrospective. The Public Service Association passed from an irrational to a ludicrous stand when the general secretary, on November 26, demanded that the disparity between service and industrial rates as at October, 1947, should be “ adjusted first ”, by the Government; and that then the question of the “ even greater widening of the “ gap ” since October, 1947, could be referred to the tribunal. Mr Nordmeyer had a right to make fun of leaders capable of insisting on two bites at a cherry.