STATE EMPLOYEES APPEAL

Evening Star, Issue 21076, 13 April 1932, Page 9

STATE EMPLOYEES APPEAL

GOVERNMENT'S SHORT-SIGHTED POLICY OUT-OF-DATE PROPOSALS “ RUIN AND DISASTER TO OUR COUNTRY " [Per United Press Association.] WELLINGTON, April 13. A meeting of delegates of the Wellington branches of State employees’ organisations ' carried a resolution strongly appealing to the Government to refrain from further instituting “ the short-sighted policy of reducing the purchasing power of the workers of the dominion, which can lead only to disaster to the State, and the community as a whole, particularly to the business section and the fanners, owing to the consequent extensive destruction of the local market and the huge increase in the already large army of unemployed men and women.’’ The resolution urges that in some departments retrenchment has been so severe as to effect efficiency; that the withholding of the annual increments of the younger members of the State services constitutes a breach of contract and throws an inequitable burden on the shoulders of those least able to bear it; that the Government adopt the constructive measures already advocated by the dominion executives of the State employees’ organisations and the workers generally, instead of “out-of-date proposals that assuredly must bring ruin and disaster to our country.” * The assurance is given that in passing the resolution the State employees are not actuated by a spirit of selfishness, or a desire to shirk their fair share of the common burden, or to unduly harass the Government, but by loyalty to our country and the great traditions of our pioneers, who “sought to establish a State that would provide a bright, wholesome lesson to the civilised world, and which as a result became for many years the wonder and envy of other countries, an ideal from which it is wholeheartedly regretted that those in present authority are seeking to depart.”