Public Servants Want Independent Tribunal On Wages

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 October 1948, Page 8

Public Servants Want Independent Tribunal On Wages

(P.A.) WELLINGTON, October 12. More than 2000 employees of the Wellington section of the Public Service assembled in the Town Hall this evening to- protest against and discuss salary and wage conditions in the Public Service. After speakers from the floor had stated the views of various branches of the service, the national president of the New Zealand Public Service Association, Mr J. P. Lewin, gave the history of the breakdown of the Margins and Anomalies Committee, and discussed in detail the position as it was, and possible remedies.

Three decisions were reached. One expressed strong dissatisfaction at

the failure of the Government to increase Public Service salaries to meet the rise in the cost of living, and urged the national executive of the association to press the Government to give immediate effect to the resolution of the Wellington section, which called for automatic promotion to £485 per' annum in the clerical division, with commensurate increases for all other sections of the service.

Immediate Approach

After a report by Mr Lewin of the non-co-operative attitude of representatives of the administration on the Margins and Anomalies Committee, the meeting called on the executive of the association to make an immediate approach to the Government to secure a satisfactory decision. The meeting affirmed that the only effective method of dealing with the economic claims of public servants was an independent tribunal, as requested by the 1947 and 1948 conferences of the association, and they asked that the executive approach the Government to secure its estab-

lishment immediately. The meeting pledged its full support to the executive of the association in a campaign to obtain satisfactory salary rates, and full payment by all departments of adequate overtime and penal rates for work done outside normal working hours. In furtherance of this campaign the meeting requested that similar meetings be arranged throughout the Dominion, and that if necessary other State service organisations be asked to co-operate. A suggestion that if action was not forthcoming after these decisions, a stop-work meeting should be held, met with approval from those present. .

At meetings of the Margins and Anomalies Committee the Administration’s representatives had adopted an attitude of unconvincing taciturnity in face of every constructive proposal put forward, said Mr Lewin. The Administration had not been keen on establishing the committee in the first place, and when it was established they did all they could to obstruct its work. ' “Private Discussions”

“We had evidence on more than one occasion of private discussions between the chairman of the committee and the Prime Minister,” he said. “The committee, by its constitutional form and procedure, was tackling the task of the Arbitration Court, and it was not surprising that it fell down on the task. The recommendations made by the committee are already out of date, and can no longer be a basis for negotiation. We will judge the Government on what it does for us. Until the Government restores to us the cuts it inflicted on us, then it cannot expect the sympathies of its employees.” Until the association got a public service salary tribunal to conduct, matters in a scientific manner, he concluded, public servants would remain

a depressed class, and would become increasingly critical and resentful of their employer—the Government.