A DIPLOMA IN BANKING

Evening Post, Volume CI, Issue 19, 22 January 1921, Page 4

A DIPLOMA IN BANKING

Comparatively little is known, by the greater part of the general public of the bank "Worker,", apart from the clerk who receives, scrutinises, and initials a cheque, and the teller behind his brass grille. Besides, it is easy -for manual workers to imagine that as banks open at 10 arid close promptly at 3 the working hours of the bank clerk are remarkably few. The fact is that the. work done after the doors are closed is usually the most strenuous of the whole day. The general public sees nothing of it. The "coat-on job" can be, and often is, as hard, certainly *often more wearing, on a man than manual labour; but of late years it has' compared badly with it in respect to. remuneration. Still, it is improving. In Now Zealand its interests are watched by the Bank Officers' Guild, a new organisation, closely modelled on the English Guild and the Wliitley ideal of friendly discussion with "principals of matters affecting pay, hours, and conditions. But this is not the solo object of tho New Zealand Guild, It has high ideals .of its owu on

tlie subject of efficiency. . The general managerships and other high places in the banking profession are almost always filled by men who have gone through themill, as it were, beginning as juniors— in sonic cases at., nothing a yeur. It'is one of the few professions in which a start must be made at the absolutely lowest rung of tho ladder. Tho Guild has thoroughly recognised the fact that if its members, are to receive adequate remuneration they should • be adequately qualified to receive it. This explains its efforts, now happily successful to secure the recognition of the University of New Zealand by the institution of a Diploma in Banking The banks have formally endorsed the idea. The action taken by the Guild and its recognition by the Senate of the University -will be to the good of the public by increasing' the efficiency of- one of its most useful and faithful servants. Ip will also still further justify the claims of the bank clerk for a'monetary recognition of his services as good as, if not better than, that given to unskilled workers.