AUTOMATIC TELEPHONES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23107, 5 February 1937, Page 7

AUTOMATIC TELEPHONES

STAFF DISPLACEMENT. PROBLEM POST OFFICE SOLUTION More than half the telephones in use in New Zealand are automatic, and the coming switch-over of a fairly large exchange from manual operation to automatic has again raised the interesting question of staff displacement. “ Good-bye, ‘ Hello ’ Girls ” was the heading of a recent newspaper article relating to the subject. The problem of displacement of the individual by the machine constantly being faced in the Post Office. Large-scale arithmetic is done by the machine; the old Morse system of telegraphy is disappearing in favour of the typewriter keyboard and the automatic transmission with clear printing of the message at the receiving end, while the telephone subscriber does his own calling in many exchanges through the medium of the automatic installation. These are all laboursaving devices which give quicker service, and the human problem involved has been painlessly solved by the Post Office policy of looking ahead in staff organisation. In this it is greatly helped by an expanding business, and where any manual telephone exchange has been displaced there has been no hardship to the individual. An automatic telephone exchange involves the ordering of intricate equipment from overseas, so that the Post Office has ample time to consider the future of operators who will be displaced. A carefully-planned series of transfers takes up the surplus staff caused by the cut-over. An automatic exchange still requires its manual operators for handling toll calls, dealing with requests for information and the rural subscribers’ lines which are connected to the central exchange. The installation of delicate and complex apparatus involves a substantial increase in the staff of skilled mechanicians. Routine tests have to be made at frequent intervals so that faults may be discovered in the incipient stage. The standard of maintenance of subscribers’ lines is higher on an automatic system operating at 48 volts compared with the variable voltage of the manually-controlled lines which never exceeds 2 volts; This, in turn, calls for an increase in the outside staff.

In the case of two large exchanges converted from manual to automatic operation within recent years, the actual figures relating to displacement of human labour are of interest. Before the cut-over the operating staff in one instance totalled 135, and when the automatic had been installed it was still necessary to retain 41 operators and to make a big addition to the staff of telephone mechanicians, which was increased to 52, In the second case, where the original staff was 92, there were 22 operators retained under the automatic system, and they were reinforced with 36 telephone mechanicians. Thus labour displacement was not so heavy as might be expected. The principal gain is not under the salary heading, but in the quickening up of telephone calls and the elimination of the human tendency to make mistakes —wrong numbers are due to wrong dialling.