‘Salary Relationship Upset9

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32395, 7 September 1970, Page 24

‘Salary Relationship Upset 9

(N.Z. Press Association)

WELLINGTON, Sept. 6. The central issue in the Post Office dispute was whether the movements in pay rates for skilled tradesmen, reflecting the demand for these skills i, the community, should automatically be passed on to other groups in the State services, the chairman of the Cabinet Committee on State Services (Mr Taiboys) said in a statement yesterday.

There had been a traditional relationship between trade supervisory rates (foremen and overseers) and the clerical supervisory grades. This relationship had been upset by the substantial increases in the rewards for trade skills. The available evidence indicated that clerical rates had not moved in sympathy. “For this reason,” said Mr Taiboys, “the Government has offered to arrange a survey of clerical rates outside the State Services to establish the corresponding movement in industry and commerce.” Despite the rejection of this offer by the service organisations the Government considered, and the Government Statistician had confirmed, that such a survey could be held by the end of the year if there was the will to co-oper-ate.

“The Government has also offered an adjustment to the clerical salary scale of 3.2 per cent on present levels in the knowledge that a survey of

all industry rates will be conducted by the Department of Labour in October and the results will be applied in the State Services from July 15, 1970,” he said. The Government’s offer was conveyed in a letter sent on September 3 to the Combined State Service Organisations. The Combined organisations had rejected this offer, but although they made no request for direct Government contact they were invited on Friday to meet the Government for further discussions. It had not been possible to arrange such a meeting before tomorrow when the direct ac-

tion announced by the Post Office Association was timed to start.

Details of the letter were issued yesterday. Writing to Mr D. P. Long, secretary of the C. 5.5.0., Mr iA. G. Rodda, as chairman of the State Services Co-ordinat-ing Committee, said in part: “I am now authorised to make a formal offer of the following scale without prejudice and pending arrangements being made for a pay research exercise in the clerical area to be undertaken as referred to later.

“This scale provides for an increase of about 3.2 per cent on present scales and, in addition, for adjustments to the commencing rates for School Certificate and University Entrance qualifications, and a shortening of the basic grade scale.”

The proposed scale, starting at the lowest grade and working upwards, with the present scale in parenthesis, .would be: Grade C 6, removal of the present lowest stop of $992 and then $l2OO ($1160), $l4OO ($1296), $1550 ($1486), $1750 ($1686), $1950 ($1866), $2140 ($2044), $2325 ($2207), $2525 ($2322), and a removal of one step at the top giving $2725 ($2527 and $2630). In the higher gradings proposed increases ranged from $2875 ($2783) for grade C 5 to $4153 ($4024) for Cl. In the special grades these were $4446 ($4306) at $1 to $7759 ($7517) at $lO. The State Services Co-ordi-nating Committee had also offered, in collaboration with the C. 5.5.0., to complete urgently the establishment of a pay research unit to conduct a review of outside clerical salaries.

“It emphasises the readiness of the Government to pay clerical officers in the State Services rates comparable with those paid in private enterprise,” Mr Rodda said in the letter.

The application of the October half-yearly survey would be back-dated to July 15 and this should, with the proposed increases, narrow the gap between trades and clerical salary scales.