"ITS OWN MEDICINE"

Evening Post, Issue 73, 23 September 1936, Page 8

"ITS OWN MEDICINE"

DUTY OF GOVERNMENT

OVERTIME RATES

Declaring that the Government should be prepared to take its own medicine, Mr. S. G. Holland (National, Christchurch North) alleged during the debate on the Public Works Statement in the House of Representatives last evening that it was going to pay its employees three-quarters of the ordinary rate of pay when they worked overtime, whereas such men in private ; employment must be paid at the rate of time and a half. Mr. Holland said that according to an announcement regarding rates of pay for overtime worked by public servants, any worker in the Government service receiving £240 a year would be paid an overtime rate of 2s an hour. If that employee was working forty hours a week and he received £240 a year, that was the equivalent of 2s 4Jd an hour; yet when he was worked overtime he was going to get 2s an hour, which was less than ordinary rates. "It seems to me," he added, "that this is a kind of Irishman's rise. Let us carry the discussion a little further. Let us take a man in private employ, drawing £470 a year, for a 40-hour week. That is 4s 8d an hour. The rate of overtime for that worker would in private employ be 7s an hour. We find that the Government is going to pay such a man exactly half what it demands that the private employer shall pay. It is goinr to pay him 3s 6d an hour." Mr. Holland said he expected a Government which asked the people to take its medicine actually to take its own medicine. To take its own medicine in this case would mean doubling the overtime rales for the civil servants.

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