P. & T. ASSN.

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 November 1931, Page 8

P. & T. ASSN.

POLITICS AND ARBITRATION [PER PRESS ASSOCIATION’.] TIMARU, November 1. The determination of the Executive' of the Post and Telegraph Employees’ Association to take political action to enforce their claims in respect to their demands for a system of arbitration in connection with the salaries and conditions of the members of the service was stressed by Mr. G. A. Wilkes member of the Dominion Executive at a reunion of the South Canterbury branch of the Association last evening. Mr. Wilkes said that some form of arbitration, so as to remove the service from political-control, was most desirable. He said: “We don’t want the men placed under the Arbitration Court, but some system of arbitration or something which will do away with the present method of having the job controlled by a politician who, I say, can’t do the job properly.” Mr. Wilkes went on to trace the course of their wages since 1914, and dealt with- the cuts in tre P. and T. Service. Mr. Wilkes said that the United Party had it as ( a plank for their platform, that justice should be done to the P. and T. Service, but since becoming the Government, that Party had forgotten its pledges, and had failed to honour them. The speaker said that there had been opposition to the Association taking any active part in politics. Unfortunately, they had been forced into the position of having to take some political action in the only way that they could themselves be divorced from political action “There is a determination to take political action,” said Mr Wilkes, to secure some system of arbitration, and so to free us from political control, and thus place us on the same basis as other workers who receive that i emuneration commensurate with then services to the community. Concluding, he said: ‘I want to say that it will be the policy of the I . and T Association to take political action with a political support, with a view tosecuring a political which will remove the service Horn political control altogether.”