Commission’s Views On Pay Of Women Government Servants

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28155, 19 December 1956, Page 12

Commission’s Views On Pay Of Women Government Servants

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, December 18. The claim for equal pay for women in the Public Service should not be conceded without the fullest investigation of its probable effect throughout the community, said the Public Service Commission, in its submissions to the Government Service Tribunal in Wellington. The commission was replying to submissions made to the tribunal earlier by the Public Service Association on claims for improved clerical scales and removal of the initial Class VI maximum for women.

In the past the association’s representations to the tribunal, the commission, and the Court of Arbitration, had been along the lines that it was equitable and sensible to provide the 27-year-old male public servant with a salary which would enable him to support two children, the submissions said. Yet the association now believed that a single woman should receive the same as a married man supporting a wife and two children. The emergence of feminists in the ranks of the Public Service Association was causing some difficulty in reconciling former statements and actions with present policy, said the submissions.

“The Labour Department has estimated the cost of the equal pay principle if applied nationally as £25,000,000,” the commission said. “To adopt this proposal would be to abolish the social element in wages—the married male would be entitled to no greater reward than the single female. A payment from social security funds for the support of a wife would then become unavoidable. “There are 400,000 married women in New Zealand not gainfully employed. A payment of £5O a year to wives would cost £20,000,000, and this would fairly obviously have to come from the taxpayer—the present direct social security charge on income would have to be increased.” The claims of the Federation of Labour for general wage orders had been generally based on 75 per cent, of the male rate for females, and this basis had been accepted by the Court of Arbitration, said the commission. The New Zealand Government had affirmed its support for the 1.L.0. principle of equal pay in terms of the definition of equal work as “work of equal over-all value.” It was significant that New Zealand had not yet ratified the 1.L.0. convention and accepted the obligation to carry it out. Discussing the rival claims of men and women to preferment, it was submitted that an employee who knew

he had to work for 40 years would be more stable, adaptable, versatile and ambitious than one who hoped her working days were numbered, as they were in the case of most women.

It was the commission’s experience, said the submissions, that women were less inclined than men to seek promotion, and men generally did not take kindly to working under the control of women.

Single women were generally averse to accepting transfers but a surprising number of Public Service women were able to embark privately on extended overseas tours in spite of their allegedly low salaries, the commission said. With an automatic maximum of £950 this number might grow to embarrassing proportions.

“The Public Service is still in sound health, and this will continue to be the case in spite of the applicant’s fantastic suggestions of an imminent and inevitable collapse,” said the commission.