PUBLIC SERVICE SALARY CUTS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20899, 13 December 1929, Page 15

PUBLIC SERVICE SALARY CUTS.

W UIE EUITOB. Sir,—ln connection with "my letter on the above subject, which appeared in your columns on November 29, I have been awaiting "the arrival of authoritative ■ figures for" which I wrote in order to make' a correction if necessary.’ Apparently by some mischance the information 'has not _ yet come to hand, but, on the assumption that, your higher figures are correct, then I would be in error in say- . ing " some of whose salaries reached four figures.” I should have said."in salaries up to £80.0.”. Your own figures show—• taking them us applying to, the first cut and-then adding the amount of the second cnt^—that there was no attempt at a proportionate reduction between bare-living salaries and salaries nearing £BOO. The' reduction in. a salary of, say. £235 was altogether disproportionate to the reduction in a salary, of, say, £750. The bitterness in the ..minds, of the lower grade public servants- over this matter is based on the fact of .this disproportion, along with 1 the knowledge that the highly-paid men could get a restoration of the salary quts under the name of reclassification or regrading, while hundreds of the men oq whom the reductions pressed most heavily have never had a penny of the salary, cuts restored to' them by. regrading,' though Reform politicians seem fond of saying that they have. Your lower figures, given in yotir footnote to my letter,-were certainly quite misleading. Yr>»i afterwards aditiitted to another correspondent that you .gave the figures for the first cut only.-_ But tliis- was' -surely' beside the (I'ioation, when the matter/-1 waswriting about I 'was . the effect, of. the- two cuts.. And, even then’ the reductibn you" give for the' grade T,belonged to myself -represents, not the £ls-of: the first ’cut, but the £lO of the second cuti—l am, etc., - ~ . , .... .P. Malthos. Hillgroye, .December 10. [The statement by -our correspondent that be was in error on the assumption that pup ..higher • figures, wgre correct is gratuitous. Our ■ correspondent has relied on : his memory, -Whereas, we have quoted . the terms ' of' the statute.— E». O.D.T.j • ,