Public Service Assn. Is 50 Years Old

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30210, 15 August 1963, Page 11

Public Service Assn. Is 50 Years Old

Last month marked the fiftieth anniversary of the formation of the Public Service Association. The occasion will be marked by a special jubilee supplement. An editorial in the association’s monthly journal says the assocation was formed at a conference in Wellington in July, 1913. ‘‘to maintain the rights and privileges of the service and to give expression tn the aspiration and desires of its members.” The Public Service Act of 1913 did a number of essential things for the progress of the Public Service of this country, said the editorial. It removed the service from political patronage, it gave a guarantee of continuity and status regardless of the passing tide of political vicissitudes, and introduced the 19th century. British conception of appointment and promotion by merit. The recognised task of the association was to defend and extend the basic conceptions underlying these changes, and to represent the members of the service in negotiations with the authorities for the defence and improvement of their remuneration and cond-

itions of service, the editorial said.

“In spite of its record of steady improvements in conditions of public service employees, the association has remained very much on the defensive,” said the editorial. “It has been unable to resist inroads bn service conditions such as those contained in the legislation of 1951, when the association lost the right to nominate a member of the Public Service Commission, and 1962,

when th«i whole basis of fixing salaries was changed disadvantageously and about 8) top secvice jots were placed beyond the reach ot the normal appeal procedure.” “It may appear to be a paradox that, with the day-to-day government of the service in non-political hands—a principle we have always defended to the utmost—we should still have to engage in directly political battles. But in a democratic society, it is one of the facts of Ife which has to be faced. “There is little doubt that, but for the known fact that public servants have a final resort to the ballot box along with the rest ot the community those victories which we have won as an association would still be in the realms of dreamland,” the editorial said.