RAILWAY SERVANTS’ HOLIDAYS.

Evening Star, Issue 4894, 7 November 1878, Page 1

RAILWAY SERVANTS’ HOLIDAYS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —The holidays for railway employes are now discontinued, which will be seen from the following circular from the Commissioner of Railways for this Island s “Christchurch, 15fch May, 1878. All authorised holidays are stopped; and all granted holidays will be deducted from pay.” Can anv of your numerous readers inform me whether or not the Commissioner and his immediate subordinates have had any holidays since the 15th May last. Now, the majority of the surfacemen are married and have large families, and if any of them wanted day off in a lifetime he must sacrifice his pay, which is the handsome sum of /a. Again, this 7s-man must turn out when wanted—day, or night, or Sunday—and that too without any extra pay : so says the rule book. Is there any other department under the Government where the officials do not receive stated holidays every year ? I think not. Then why should the railway servant be deprived of his four sfiidays a year, which were so anxiously lookJSi forward to by the hardest-working class in the service ? I know locomotive men who have toiled for years on the Dunedin section, and who have asked for holidays at the dullest time of the year, but they were put off from time to time; and now they may ask them in vain.

On the Home, Victorian, South Australian, and New South Wales railways all servants receive holidays with great regularity every year. I am really surprised that the Press and the public have not interested themselves in the matter and sympathised a little with the railway servants. I think our Con - missioner is treading in the footsteps of Mr Passmore ; and I venture to predict, at no distant date, great disturbances, ending in strikes, which will be very unproductive to employer and employ6.—l am, &c., A Surfaceman*. Lovell’s Flat, November G.