Teachers' Salaries Officer To Retire Next January

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29368, 22 November 1960, Page 6

Teachers ' Salaries Officer To Retire Next January

Mr R. W. (Dick) Blazey, who is responsible administratively for the salaries of 3000 staff under the Canterbury Education Board, will retire at the end of January after 40 years’ service. One of the longest-serving employees, he has moved from the position of “jack of all trades” to master of the most and detailed division of the board. Except for the secretaries under whom he has served, there is probably no better-known member of the staff.

Mr Blazey joined the staff 40 years ago as a storeman-clerk in the board’s workshops. In 1924 he was promoted to “official buyer.” This new post involved much more than purchasing stationery and office gear. In those days the board erected its own schools and Mr Blazey remembers the tremendous orders for bricks for the West Christchurch District High School, the Phillipstown School, and the Richmond School, as well as many other schools for which he bought all materials.

But this did not always keep him busy and in quieter periods he doubled as acting foreman at Timaru, truck driver for the workshops, and did spells in most divisions of the board. In 1934, Mr Blazey was transferred to the new teachers’ salaries section—he and a typist—and has been its head since 1935. This job was also much smaller then and Mr Blazey served at times as accounts clerk and chief clerk also.

At that time teachers’ salaries paid out from Christchurch totalled about £250,000 a year. Today the pay list for a year is £2 million for teachers and all other staff under the board’s control. All these personnel now total about 3000. His own staff has trebled. ' Mr Blazey says there has scarcely been a year in which there, was not some general adjustment to be made to salaries; but. the biggest came last year when teachers went on to fort-

nightly pay. Daily lists of adjustment have been sent to Wellington for "machining” ever since. “With all its monotony and detail, it is an interesting job in which you just have to know everything about the system and a lot about the people concerned,” Mr Blazey said yesterday. Like every member of the 3000 staff whose pay he handles, he has his own personal record card which must be kept up-to-date.

Mr Blazey is well known to teachers. He is even better known to the public in sport. “Rugby, swimming, cricket and other games have always helped me to play by the rules and be fair in my job,’’ he said.