PUBLIC SERVICE SALARY CUTS.

Evening Star, Issue 20313, 23 October 1929, Page 8

PUBLIC SERVICE SALARY CUTS.

In the abnormal days of the war certain bonuses and increases of remuneration were made to members of the Civil Service, among others, on the ground of the increased cost of living. In the lean days that followed they were withdrawn again, or very largely withdrawn, by the Public Expenditure Adjustment Act of 1922, on the grounds that the cost of living had fallen, and that decreasing revenue made it “essential in the public interest ” that these extra charges upon it should be diminished. Both acts were necessary in the circumstances in which they took place, but the Public Service has always felt a grievance on account of its salary cuts. In the course of seven years we imagine it had come to be rather a sentimental grievance than one which any large proportion of the service felt any expectation of seeing redressed, more than it has been redressed by regrading and other changes of the interim. Still, “ hope springs eternal in the human breast.” The grievance was worth agitating, from time to time, and a new prospect may have seemed to dawn for it politically when a new Government, several of whose members had been sympathetic in a general manner in the past, came into office in circumstances which also promised more power to s the Labour Party. The Labour Party has always been very much in favour of higher wages for everybody, with the least thought of whore the money was to be found. .Unfortunately, the time which promised so well politically soon displayed itself as the worst time for reasons more material. If any Civil servant seriously thought that any-

thing approaching a million pounds a year—the amount at which the requirement is now assessed—could {b© provided for tho purpose of restoring his and other salary cuts, his hopes must have fallen to zero when ho saw that there was a deficit on last year’s finances of half a million, making a need (reinforced by increased standing charges for interest) of new taxation, and that unemployment was costing more instead of less. The answer which has now been given by the Prime Minister will be no surprise, and less than a disappointment to him in the circumstances.

The answer—of Sir Joseph and a special service committee to which the matter was referred —covers all the ground. Tho committee finds that to restore the cuts, making allowance for improvements which have been already granted, would cost at least a million a year. The request amounts to an increase of the general salary scales of tho service which is pronounced to be neither warranted, practicable, nor capable of equitable adjustment. The present maximum salaries in the lower grades aro largely in accordance with those for outside employment, and the personnel of the service and positions of most of its members have changed out of measure since the cuts were made, improvements were made for many by the regrading of live years ago, when, it has been elsewhere stated, the cost of living was specially considered in changes, and a new regrading is now overdue. Sir Joseph Ward stresses the financial considerations which make a general raising of levels plainly impossible at the present time, and leaves no room for reasonable dissent from his decision that all that can be hoped for is the improvement of individual positions by regrading. A special committee during the recess will go into the financial position of the superannuation fu/ds, which the Prime Minister considers to be a more vital matter than the claims for salary adjustment. That is also, we understand, the opinion of the Public Service Association, which does not include the Post and Telegraph Department, railways, and teachers. The Post and Telegraph Department stands in a special position as regards this question of salaries, because an unusually large proportion of its members belong to a grade, carrying a maximum salary of £295, from which there are only limited opportunities of promotion. The defence made of the salaries in this grade is that they are not less than those paid for similar work outside tho service. It is for the Post and Telegraph Employees’ Association to answer that contention. The association is evidently sore because the Prime Minister finds it impracticable to offer it more than palliatives, but in view of the financial position, which admits no argument, we expert to have heard the last of the Civil servants’ general claim. We are quite unable to believe with Mr Holland that more than the smallest proportion of them '‘confidently expected” to get what they have officially asked for. Some of them may be worse off than they would have been if there had been no war, but that misfortune is not confined to Civil servants.