TEMPORARY EMPLOYEES

Greymouth Evening Star, 19 October 1939, Page 12

TEMPORARY EMPLOYEES

PUBLIC SERVICE COMPLAINTS. CHRISTCHURCH, October 18. "Human flesh can stand only a certain amount of oppression and the Government can blame only its unjust impositions should any drastic issue result from a failure of its temporary employees to secure reasonable and fair justice,” said Mr S. W. Ayres to-day, in his capacity of president of the Canterbury Public Services’ Temporary Employees’ Association. “It is evident that Mr Nash has not given much thought to the question if he thinks. that the Public Service Commissioner has given the necessary attention to the temporary clerks and the temporary men in the service,” said Mr Ayres. “The service throughout New Zealand is seething with dissatisfaction, so much so that members have resigned from the Public Service Association because of the apathy of the executive of the association to them and the Commissioners’ repeated failure to give justice.”

The temporary employees have now placed their case before the various clerical workers’ unions in New Zealand, which, in tu.rn, had placed the complaints in the hands of the Federation of Labour, which was taking action.

“And I state emphatically that we have had more representation and more consideration from the federation in a few months than we had from the Public Service Association in years,” said Mr Ayres. “We are asking for award wages. Married men in our ranks with dependants are today receiving low wages—at least £5O to £6O below award scales—although Mr Nash to-day announced that public works employees are to receive wage increases to place them in line with award wages in other industries. The odium of the present conditions has compelled all temporary employees who can to seek assistance through family allowances.” “The Minister’s remarks on the Public Service in the broader sense are very interesting, for it has always been contended by us that working in industry is really ‘public service,’ ” he said. “To continue denying us award wages because we have transferred from the broader to the narrow Public Service, by reason of economic pressure engendered by the previous Government’s uneconomic measures, is a denial of the Labour Government’s stated intention to help the ‘under dog.’ ” At the last conference of the Public Service Association, Mr Fraser, Mr Ayres recalled, said that the Government was more concerned with the “under-dog”; but 12 months had passed without anything being done for the “under-dog” in the Governmtnt’s employ.

“We may be temporary employees (which is really an endeavour to promote and maintain class distinction), but we are citizens who have given to the State, by reason of our industrial years, service equally as valuable as that given by so-called permanent members,” said Mr Ayres. “It is time that the Government set its own house in order by granting us award wages, the claims for which are in the hands of the Federation of Labour.”