Public Service pay adjustment date

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32707, 9 September 1971, Page 3

Public Service pay adjustment date

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, September 8. The Government has decided that adjustments to State Services wage and salary rates arising from the Department of Labour’s half-yearly and ruling-rates surveys will be effective from January 15,1971. Announcing this today, the chairman of the Cabinet Committee on the State Services (Mr Taiboys) said that the State Services Co-ordinating Committee and the Combined State Service Organisations had been unable to reach agreement on the date.

“The Combined State Ser-| vice Organisations have contended that the rate of increase in wages and salaries in the private sector was much greater in the first three months of the period surveyed than in the second three months, and that on these grounds an earlier date -than the mid-point of January 15 should be chosen,” he said.

•I '‘ln addition, they have. • sought acceptance of the new • rates as base rates for the ; purposes of the Stabilisation > of Remuneration Act and the ; consequential application of 1 the cost-of-living order made Iby the Remuneration Aui thority.” > “The claims made by the ■ C.S.S.O. have been consid- • ered carefully by the Government, but cannot be ' accepted,” said Mr Taiboys. ‘Established practice’ “It has been established practice with the general agreement of the C.S.S.O. that the effective date of any increase should be the midpoint between surveys, because evidence to justify some other date is usually inconclusive.” Mr Taiboys said it was implicit in this principle that there could be advantage or disadvantage to one side or the other depending on the circumstances. The Government believed it should be departed from only in exceptional circumstances. He said that in the private sector the base rate was, except in very limited circumstances, the rate of remuneration payable at January 1, 1971. Increases approved after that date were subject to the 7 per cent limit set by the Government and were offset against the cost-of-living orders, and the Government could not, therefore, agree to a base rate for State servants being rates assessed at April 15, 1971.

“Nor can the Government ignore the fact that the survey adjustments are to be paid in full even though in excess of 7 per cent,” he said.