RAILWAY ECONOMIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20722, 15 November 1930, Page 10

RAILWAY ECONOMIES.

Heavy reductions in wages in all grades have been proposed by the British railway companies, and this retrenchment is to be supplemented by a curtailment of Existing privileges in regard to working conditions. The companies propose in future to pay only for time actually worked, to include Sunday duty in -the standard hours, and to allow time and a-quarter for overtime. The necessity for a similar revision of staff concessions in New Zealand was emphasised by the report of the Royal Commission, which set forth a formidable catalogue of rules and regulations under which the cost of operating the service has been progressively increased. The commission showed that the cost of salaries and wages had annually increased in the last seven years, partly owing to extension of the system, the running of additional trains and growth of goods traffic. But the inflation nf the salaries and wages bill has been entirely disproportionate to the growth of revenue. Tn 1924-25, it amounted to £4,071,000, or 58 per cent, of the revenue ; in 1929-30, it was £'5,193,000, or 68i per cent, of the revenue. In the last five years, railway earnings have fallen Bhort of interest payments by £2,000,000. Had wanes and salaries been maintained at the 1924-25 ratio to revenue throughout the period, there would have been a total saving of £2,500,000. Last year .alone, payments to the staff exceeded that proportion by £860,000. One of the prime factors in this inflation of working expenses is shown by the commission to be payment for which no return is obtained by the department. There is no practical justification for extra allowances for Sunday duty to first division men on annual salaries or for double* rates for Sundays and holidays to second division men. The greatest anomaly is the payment of overtime rates for all'work between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. and in some cases between 0 p.m. and 6 a.m. It is a fundamental condition of a railway system, that work should extend over day and night and continue during holidays. The only rational policy is to distribute night work and holiday duty equitably among the staff. Railwavmen may resent any curtailment of the gradually accumulated privileges they enjoy, but they cannot be blind to the fact that so long as it bears such handicaps, the service cannot meet the competition of rival transport upon which such exactions are not made. The responsibility for restoring the railways to solvency has been undertaken by the Minister and his officers, but unless the staff co-operates in a general adjustment to "the economic needs and circumstances now prevailing," their efforts will fail and more drastic measures will be forced upon the whole service by the diversion of traffic to more efficient and economical transport and the consequent financial collapse of the railways.