CRITERIA FOR PAY SCALES

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31771, 30 August 1968, Page 20

CRITERIA FOR PAY SCALES

The aim in setting pay scales for each occupational class of the State Services should be to recruit and retain an efficient staff and to be fair to the tax-paying public and to employees in the State Services, says the report of the Royal Commission on Salary and Wage Fixing Procedures in the New Zealand State Services.

The Royal Commission, in presenting its conclusions on scales of salaries and wages, did so in the form of a draft

of a section to replace that of the State Services Act 1962. The Royal Commission recommended that the Commission, in setting a pay scale for any occupational class, should have regard to the following criteria: “(a) External comparability, being the current remuneration received by employees in positions outside the State Services which are closely comparable with positions in that occupational class, which closely comparable positions are referred to as benchmark positions: “(b) Vertical relativity, being the adequacy of the margins between benchmark positions and other positions in that occupational class, taking into account differences of responsibility and skill: “(c) Horizontal relativity, being the current remuneration received by those in benchmark positions in other occupations (whether in or outside the State Services) which, however dissimilar in job content, have some similar requirements such as education, training, or skill: “(d) Recruitment and retention, being the need to attract, and to hold at all levels of that occupational class, enough staff of sufficient competence to ensure efficiency, and the adequacy of the current pay scale for these purposes.” For the present and probably for some years to come the pay-fixing machinery of the State Services must centre chiefly on general adjustments, checked and (where necessary) modified bj’ pay research, says the report. An index of movement is needed to keep State pay in proper relativity with outside pay. The Labour Department’s half-yearly survey should replace the ruling rates survey as the index of movement. The index should be derived from the average weekly earnings in the private sector: (i) including seasonal industries: but (ii) excluding the public sector (including for this purpose State schools, public hospitals, universities, public corporations and local authorities). The Government Statistician should make and certify corrections for the varying proportions of women workers on a 60 per cent wage-rela-tionship with men until a change is indicated by the census or other cogent statistics.

Conditions of service, other than pay, should be fixed according to external comparability, says the report, except when the special features of employment in the State Services make this inappropriate.