TIME OFF

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 91, 17 April 1923, Page 4

TIME OFF

POSTAL OFFICERS OBJECT TO PRESENT SYSTEM.

Reference to the vexed question of time off in lieu of overtime is made in the annual report of the Wellington section of the Post and Telegraph Officers' Association. The report states :— "One of the greatest bugbears of the service, and one of its most unsettling influences, is the perpetration by the administration of the inequitable system of granting officers 'time off' in lieu of overtime. The whole system is admittedly wrong and unjust, and was only agreed to by the association in its endeavour to retain in the service some seventy or eighty officers whom the administration alleged could not be otherwise retained. Granted that • the position „was then as stated, the time appears to have long passed when the De. partment could afford to dispense with .the services of these officers. At pre'■sent, in this section alone, there is accumulated 'time off' to the extent of, approximately, some 4000 hours owing to officers. _If there is a redundancy of staff, why is it not utilised in working off this 'time off ? Surely this is a very pertinent query. Again, in a branch of this section, with a. staff of about 130 officers, we find that so far only 25 officers have been granted their annual leave; and this with three ancKa half months of the year gone. Surely this is another case where some of the alleged redundant staff might be usefully employed ! Your committee has every reason to believe that this state of affairs is not confined to the Wellington section, 1 but is general throughout the-service. Apart,, however, from this, there is the annual monetary losb which officers justain under the present system. It is not unusiml for an officer called on to perform duties on holidays or on Sundays to have to expend anything up to two shillings in car fares during the day, and for this he is 'recompensed with time off.' Can the" Department expect a satisfied service under such conditions?"