‘Inadequate’—Mr Tucker

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31077, 4 June 1966, Page 1

‘Inadequate’—Mr Tucker

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, June 3.

“The announcement by the Prime Minister that the Government had decided to apply the £5O survey increase on a flat basis for salaries up to £2175 a year and fade it out above that figure will certainly not be welcomed by the Government employees concerned,” said the chairman of the Combined State Services Organisations (Mr W. E. B. Tucker) tonight.

“The organisations have been striving for some time to convince the Government that, in order to give effect to one of the elementary principles of wage-fixing, namely, the maintenance of adequate margins for skill and responsibility, it was essential that this increase should be applied on a percentage basis. “It is regrettable that, in spite of reconsidering the matter on the basis of our further representations, the Government did not see its way to coming some way at least towards what we consider to be the fair and just procedure.

“As is indicated in Mr Holyoake’s statement, the employee organisations have not agreed with this particular aspect of the application of the survey increase, and this appears to leave us no alternative but to ask the Government Service Tribunal to arbitrate on this issue.

“The proposed flat adjustment of higher salaries from April 1 is, in our view, quite inadequate, even on the movement in basic rates alone, there was ample justification for a full review of higher salaries which would have certainly indicated increases at the top far in excess of the figure now being granted. “Another consequence of the Government’s attitude on this matter is that for the large number of Government employees for whom 1966 is a five-yearly regrading year, there will not contrary to established practice, be a new salary scale upon which this can be based. The effect of

this will be felt by employees throughout the scale. “Even if full justice is granted in this regard next year, after the review of higher salaries proposed for later this year, it still means that a large number of Government employees have been deprived for a year or more

of increases to which they are rightly entitled. “Moreover, the decision indidates a failure on the part of the Government to give full effect to its oft-repeated intention of ensuring that salaries for Government employees do not fall behind those in private employment.”